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Volume 31 Numbers 5 


































































































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VOLUME 31 NUMBER 5 


Welcome to our first cover story 
devoted to the making of TV hit XENA, 
WARRIOR PRINCESS. The quirky 
fantasy series and companion show to 
HERCULES, THE LEGENDARY 
JOURNEYS has become a staple of TV 
syndication that is more popular in the 
ratings than even STAR TREK. Now in its 
fourth season on the air, the Sword & 
Sorcery adventure show from 
Renaissance Pictures—the folks who 
brought you THE EVIL DEAD and 
DARKMAN movie series—runs an 
amazing gamut from action drama to 
farcical comedy they've even done a 
musical episode! But whatever the tenor 
of the show, the result is consistently fun 
to watch, giving the series a loyal cadre of 
viewers that other immitators have been 
unable to attract. 

New York correspondent and 
Xenaphile Dan Scapperotti provides this 
issue's look behind-the-scenes at the 
making of the show, including an 
exclusive interview with New Zealand star 
Lucy Lawless. Scapperotti also interviews 
Renaissance producer and series creator 
Rob Taped, who founded the company 
with director Sam Raimi. Taped, a fan of 
Hong Kong action filmmaking had always 
wanted to introduce a female action 
heroine to television, and crafted a show 
unlike any other. In the process he fell in 
love with and married his leading lady. 
Lawless calls XENA "a great job” and 
Taped The man of my dreams.’’ 

On the movie front, as we all wait for 
the opening of STAR WARS, Lawrence 
French provides the latest news on the 
super-secretive prequel. Also previewed 
is the highly anticipated opening of David 
Cronenberg's videogame-made-flesh 
horror eXistenZ Dennis Fischer takes a 
look at IDLE HANDS, a teen horror 
comedy from Roger Corman protege 
Rodman Flender. And Joe Fordham 
provides a peek at THE MUMMY. 
Universal's big-budget attempt to open a 
new horror franchise. 

Also included is a repod from the set 
in Australia devoted to the making of THE 
MATRIX, a stadling science fiction effod 
from the directors of BOUND. 

Frederick S. Clarke 


‘The Magazine with a Sense of Wonder' 


MAY I9W 



Page 8 



Page 16 



Page 48 



Page 56 


7 “EXISTENZ” 

Video-gaming David Cronenberg style, in a nightmare 
fantasy universe. / Preview by Alan Jones 

8 “STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE" 

George Lucas abandons parts 7 through 9—life’s too short. 
Article by Lawrence French 

10 “Idle hands” 

Rodman Flender directs a wild killer-hand romp. / Article 
by Dennis Fischer 

14 “The MUMMY” 

Universal gives their monster franchise a RAIDERS OF 
THE LOST ARK makeover. / Articles by Joe Fordham 

16 The making of the matrix” 

The Wachowski Bros. (BOUND) launch sci-fi for the new 
millennium. / Article by Dennis Fischer 

28 William shatner: keep on trekkin’ 

Captain Kirk finds life beyond the final frontier, including a 
satire of Trek fandom, / Article by Anna L. Kaplan 

32 “XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS” 

The sword & sorcery amazon rules! Behind the scenes with the 
Xena creator, star & crew. / Interviews by Dan Scapperotti 

48 “Carnival of souls” 

Wes Craven offers a color update of the creepy 1962 
shocker. / Article by Mitch Persons 

52 “HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS!” 

Ed Naha makes genre parody an art, with the TV spin-off 
starring Peter Scolari. / Article by Dan Scapperotti 

56 “DEEP SPACE NINE:” VIC FONTAINE 

Crooner James Darren on finding new life as a holographic 
hit on the final frontier, / Article by Anna L. Kaplan 

58 “Black mask” 

Bizarre fantasy action, Hong Kong style, starring Jet Li. 
Article by Craig Reid 

5 Hollywood gothic 

59 Reviews 62 Letters 


Publisher & Editor: Frederick S Clarke. Wes! Coast Editor: Sieve Bindrowski Bureaus: New York Dan Persons. Dan Scapperotli. lais Angi-lcs Douglas Fby. 
London Alan Jonov Contributors: James G. Bout titer, Dennis Fischer. J<ie l-ord ham. lawrencc French, Anna L. Kaplan. Milch Pena ms. Craig Reid. 

Frederick C. S/ehin. Chuck Wagner. Paul Wardle. Fditoriul Operations Manager: Flame Fiedler 
Fdilorial Production: Lisa Totnctak-WaJkinglon, David Hellm Publisher's Assistant: lisa Coduto. Circulation: Faith Redding Business Manager Celeste Casey Clarke. 

PHOTO CTtEDTIS: C1999 Artrsao Ent(58,39T); OBucna Vfeu TV (52-35); 01995 WUt Disney (53R(. VJulian Ferreira(55);Ava V t icrlity f 7T). John P Johnson (IOBI, 11,12.13); C langc (52H). CIvtH Matrix 
(Jamii Boland If* 27), Ol W M( A TV (45T). C| ws Mindfirc Kni (2K-31). Albeit t < blcga (31B). CIWS Paramount I Robbie Robinson 3ft. 37). CI Studios l ISA Kienflrcv f I Short 33,34, 35. J7. W, tvt, 43,44.4ft. 
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AMUSING INSPIRATION 

THE MUSE (Miramax) 

In his latest directing effort, which he co-wrote with Monica 
Johnson, Albert Brooks stars as screenwriter Steven 
Phillips, whose successful career comes to a screeching 
halt due to a case of writer's block. Phillips will do anything 
to regain his livelihood, if only he can find the inspiration to 
start writing again. Fortunately, help arrives in the form of a 
real life Muse (played by Sharon Stone, pictured). As usual. 
Brooks pokes plenty of fun at himself in the form of his on¬ 
screen persona, but this time out he also aims his sights on 
Hollywood, as Phillips gambles his career, marriage, and 
sanity on the Muse's ability to help him churn out a come¬ 
back script. Andie MacDowelt and Jeff Bridges co-star. 

June 4 


Austin Powers: The Spy 
Who Shagged Me (ni_) June 11 

Michael Myers returns as the International Man of Mys¬ 
tery (and as his diabolical nemesis. Dr. Evil) in this se¬ 
quel to the sleeper hit of two years ago. Also returning 
is Robert Wagner, joined by newcomers Heather Gra¬ 
ham and Rob Lowe. 




CHEDUL 



The Mummy (Universal) April 30 

Writer-director Stephen Sommers has succeeded 
where George Romero, Joe Dante, and Clive Barker 
have failed, remaking Universal's classic thriller. Som¬ 
mers got the greenlight by presenting producer Jim 
Jacks with an eighteen-page treatment that took the 
1932 Boris Karloff story and used it as a spring-board 
for a new approach. "I liked the original basic concept of 
THE MUMMY very much," Sommers noted. -Basically a 
guy falls in love; he does a bad thing; he gets cursed; 
he spends 3000 years alive in a sarcophagus What I 
wanted to do was to make it much more of a romantic 
adventure movie about a French Foreign Legionnaire. 
Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser), who hooks up with 
this British Librarian. Evelyn Carnahan [Rachel Weisz|. 
The two of them go off in search of a lost city where 
they think there's treasure buried They end up digging 
up the Mummy. Imhotep [Arnold Vosloo), who wakes 
up. regenerates, and brings with him the ten plagues of 
Egypt as he tries to revive his princess. That’s the story 
in a nutshell." SEE PAGE 14 Joe Fordham 

The Phantom Menace (Fox) May 21 

Sixteen years after RETURN OF THE JEDI. George 
Lucas finally presents his prequel to the original STAR 
WARS trilogy. Will it be worth the wait? SEE PAGE 8 

Supernova (mgm) September 


Black Mask (Artisan) April 30 

Hoping to cash in on the blockbuster success of martial 
arts star Jet Li's U S. debut in LETHAL WEAPON 4. Ar¬ 
tisan Entertainment has dubbed and edited this Tsui 
Hark Hong Kong Fant-Asia production for American 
consumption. Li plays the titular character, a member of 
a special combat squad rendered impervious to pain 
through brain surgery SEE PAGE 58 

DEEP Blue Sea (WB) August 

A May 14 debut has been pushed back to August for 
this film that tries to out-jaw JAWS by detailing what can 
go wrong when sharks are bred to have a level of intel¬ 
ligence matching that of dolphins, while still retaining 
their aggressive instincts. Stellan Skarsgard and 
Samuel Jackson star for director Renny Harlin (A 
NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4). working from a 
script by Duncan Kennedy and John Zinman. 

EXISTENZ (Dimension) April 23 

Set in the near future, the new film from writer-director 
David Cronenberg, details a world where video game 
designers are superstars and players can log on direct¬ 
ly through a socket in their spinal cord. Jennifer Jason 
Leigh stars as a designer who must enter her own 
game when her life is threatened. Jude Law. Ian Holm, 
and Willem Datoe co-star SEE PAGE 7 

IDLE Hands (Columbia) April 23 

This so-called “gruesome comedy-horror film" is about 
what happens when the devil possesses the right hand 
of a clueless slacker (played by Devon Sawa). Roger 
Corman-graduate Rodman Flender directed, from a 
script by Terri Hughes & Ron Milbauer SEE PAGE 10 

The Matrix (wb) April 2 

This big-budget science-fiction effort, produced by Joel 
Silver and starring Keanu Reeves, jumping back and 
forth between February and the Summer and finally 
landing somewhere in between Lawrence Fishburn co- 
stars. Joel Silver (DEMOLITION MAN) produced. Larry 
and Andy Wachowski (BOUND) wrote and directed. 
SEEPAGE 16 

Mighty Peking Man 

(Rolling Thunder) April (exclusive) 

Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder and Cowboy Book¬ 
ing International team up to release this 1977 Hong 
Kong production from the Shaw Brothers, which will 
play a senes ot midnight bookings across the country. 
The KING KONG-type story follows a team of explorers 
who discover a giant ape “as big as a mountain” in the 
Himalayas The ape is brought back to civilization as a 
carnival sideshow attraction, but (of course) breaks free 
and goes on a rampage. 




The Thirteenth 

Floor (Columbia) May 28 

Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin exec produced this 
adaptation of a '70s German TV series, about a busi¬ 
ness tycoon (Armin Mueller-Stahl) leading a double life; 
one in the contemporary, real world; the other in a tech¬ 
nologically-created 1937 SEE CFO 31:4:10. 


NO TOGAS, PLEASE! 


A Midsummer 
Nights Dream (Fox) 

Shakespeare'S fanciful play follows the romantic 
entanglements of four star-crossed lovers who flee 
into the woods, where they encounter fairy queens, 
satyrs, water nymphs, and the mischievous trick¬ 
ster Puck (Stanley Tucci, pictured). This filmization 
also stars Christian Bale. Calista Flockhart, Kevin 
Kline. Rupert Everett, and Michelle Pfeiffer Previ¬ 
ous productions have been set in different histori¬ 
cal periods, but this film takes place, at least in 
some ways, in Italy at the turn of the century. But. 

writer-director Michael Hoffman, cur¬ 
rently in post-production on his film ver¬ 
sion of the play, pointed out that the play 
is not tied to any specific time: “It starts 
in a kind of fantasy world inhabited by 
mythological characters who actually 
behave quite naturalistically. in spite of 
the many classical references they 
make. And then you move to a group of 
artisans or workmen who sound like 
they're from the west ol England, and 
then you go into a forest which seems to 
be informed by both the classical world, 
but also by English folk tradition. So it s 
a very peculiar play in that way. As 
much as any of Shakespeare's plays, 
it's kind of free of time and place. You 
have to come in and impose something 
on it. But I thought it was best to avoid 
togas" he added, with a laugh 

Douglas Eby 


June 4 


Upcoming cinefantastique at a 
glance, along with a word or two 
for the discriminating viewer. 

compiled by Jay Stevenson 
(unless otherwise noted) 


This film was almost set to open on March 12—until a 
dispute between the studio and director Walter Hill left 
the film in post-production limbo. Having completed 
principal photography, Hill wanted more time for further 
shooting. Metro Goldwyn Mayer, on the other hand, 
wanted to test screen the film first, before ponying up 
any additional bucks. Hill objected to the test screen¬ 
ings and left; MGM will complete the film without his in¬ 
volvement, although his name will probably remain on 
the credits as director. 


4 
























American 

Horror 


black scorpion 

Roger Corman spins made-for-cable 
superheroine into a TV series . 



Exec producer Roger Corman poses with Michelle Lintel, who stars in BLACK 
SCORPION, a completed TV series that Corman hoped to sell at MIPCOM. 


by Sue Feinberg 
& Judd Hollander 

Take the Dark Knight theme 
from BATMAN, add the action of 
XENA, the cartoonish atmosphere 
of DICK TRACY, the mystique of 
WONDER WOMAN and the byplay 
of LOIS AND CLARK—and you 
come up with BLACK SCORPION, 
the world’s newest superhero, 
coming soon to television screens 
near you. courtesy of Roger Gor¬ 
man's Concorde/New Horizons stu¬ 
dios. Newcomer Michelle Lintel, a 
former Miss Kansas, stars in the 
dual identities of Darcy Walker and 
the Black Scorpion—a cop by day 
and vigilante superhero by night. 

After conventional law enforce¬ 
ment proved ineffective at stopping 
the supervillain who gunned down 
her policeman father, Darcy 
donned the skintight uniform and 
dark mask of the Black Scorpion. 
With the help of such gadgets as a 
ring which shoots electric bolts of 
energy and her special Scorpion 
Mobile (equipped with extras like 
laser beam headlights), she patrols 
the City of Angels (a parallel Los 
Angeles) keeping the metropolis 
safe for all decent people. And she 
certainly has her hands full in that 
respect, for the criminal element is 
not of your average NYPD BLUE 
variety. Rather, these are supervil¬ 
lains of the BATMAN type: After¬ 
shock, who can create earth¬ 
quakes; Minerva Stone, also 
known as “Medusa." and Inferno, 
who starts fires instead of stopping 
them. (In a further Caped Crusader 
connection, two of the villains 
[Breathfaker and Clockwise] are 
played by BATMAN alumni Adam 
West and Frank Gorshin.) 

Black Scorpion has more than 
just supervillains to worry about. 
The police see her as a costumed 
vigilante, and would like nothing 
better than to put her behind bars. 
(Much as the cops did with Batman 
and Superman in their early comic 
book days.) This creates problems 
for Darcy, who finds she must walk 
a continually shrinking fine line be¬ 
tween her two existences. 


Things are not made easier by 
the attraction Darcy feels for her 
partner Steve Rafferty, a kind of 
male Lois Lane, played by Scott 
Valentine, (of FAMILY TIES fame). 
Noted Valentine, “We go right up to 
the point where they almost kiss, 
and I always back down, saying 
No, we must maintain a level of 
professionalism.'" Fortunately all is 
not doom and gloom in the City of 
Angels. Like BATMAN. XENA, and 
BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, 
the BLACK SCORPION TV series 
contains a healthy helping of hu¬ 
mor, according to Corman. one of 
the show’s executive producers. 

However, just as Batman some¬ 
times worries about how he lets the 
“Manhunter overwhelm the Man," 
Darcy faces a somewhat similar cri¬ 
sis in her duel existence as she 
finds the Black Scorpion guise is 
bringing out a different persona in 
her. While Darcy is the Black Scor¬ 
pion. she's tougher, more sure of 
herself and is also more of a sexual 
being. (After saving Steve Rafferty 
from the villain of the week, she 
usually gives him a kiss before van¬ 
ishing into the shadows.) And as 
time goes on, Darcy finds herself 
getting so preoccupied with her 
other identity that she begins to 


alienate everybody she works with. 

Black Scorpion did not begin as 
a comic book character. She ar¬ 
rived via two successful TV-movies, 
starring Joan Severance, which 
Corman produced for the Show¬ 
time cable network under the ban¬ 
ner ROGER CORMAN PRE¬ 
SENTS. When those efforts re¬ 
ceived very high ratings and gar¬ 
nered interest worldwide, Corman 
got the idea to do a series based 
on the character. 

A number of circumstances 
conspired to move the BLACK 

continued on next page 


Fresh from the critical success 
of executive producing the Oscar- 
nominated art house hit GODS 
AND MONSTERS. Clive Barker is 
now preparing to revive his own 
career as a writer-director, which 
has been on hold since the box of¬ 
fice disappointment of LORD OF 
ILLUSIONS, a major studio re¬ 
lease from MGM in 1995. 

Baker is developing an original 
horror film for New Line Cinema, 
which has been tentatively titled 
AMERICAN HORROR, which is an 
attempt to create an original Ameri¬ 
can horror iconography on the 
magnitude of such European hor¬ 
ror icons as Dracula, Frankenstein, 
and the Wolfman. The story will fo¬ 
cus on the American railroad in the 
Old West (circa 1866) as it spreads 
through Illinois and Wyoming. 

Barker told Daily Variety that 
most of the classic horror movies 
tend to have monsters based on 
European myths and superstitions, 
adding. "I’m not interested in re¬ 
turning to the tired old Gothic type. 

I want to create a new myth an 
American myth." 

New Line's Michael DeLuca, 
who is well-versed in horror litera¬ 
ture. is a fan of Barker's work and 
hopes that this first-time collabora¬ 
tion will lead to future projects, not 
to mention sequels; AMERICAN 
HORROR is being planned as the 
beginning of a potential franchise 
for the mini-major studio. "I don’t 
have any problem with something 
that lasts for more than one movie," 
said Barker "A second film can of¬ 
ten be stronger than the first." 


Short Notes 

It looks as if HOME IMPROVEMENT'S Tim Allen will take the lead in 
GALAXY QUEST, a comedy from DreamWorks about an actor who as¬ 
sumes his TV space captain persona in real life when he is recruited by 
aliens to save their planet. A Roger Corman abandoned plans to produce 
a SCREAM parody entitled I'LL SCREAM IF YOU KNOW WHAT I DID 
LAST SUMMER AT THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE after hearing the 
announcement that Dimension Pictures (owners of the SCREAM fran¬ 
chise) had their own parody set to be directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans, 
LAST SUMMER J SCREAMED BECAUSE FRIDAY THE 13TH FELL ON 
HALLOWEEN. A Now that the deal to make AMERICAN PSYCHO with 
Oliver Stone directing Leonardo DiCaprio has fallen apart. Mary Harron. 
who co-wrote the screenplay adaptation, is back in the director's chair, and 
her original choice for the title role. Christian Bale, is in the front running, 
depending on casting of co-stars. n 


5 



































CINEFANTASTIQUE NEWS 


INTERNATIONAL EDITION 


Mystery Science theatre 

Season Ten on the Satellite of Love 
launches after news of show’s demise. 



To celebrate the Season Ten debut, current star Mike Nelson (left) welcomed 
back creator and original star Joel Hodgson back for a return appearance. 


by Dan Cziraky 

It's a milestone that wasn't sup¬ 
posed to happen: the Satellite of 
Love is in its tenth year of orbit. The 
producers at Best Brains decided 
to celebrate their tenth anniversary 
debut on April 11 with a special 
episode featuring return appear¬ 
ances by series creator Joel Hodg¬ 
son and former cast member Frank 
Conniff (both currently working on 
ABC TV's SABRINA. THE TEEN¬ 
AGE WITCH). They recreated their 
familiar roles (“Joel Robinson" and 
“TV’s Frank" ) in an episode that 
saw Joel return to repair malfunc¬ 
tions on the Satellite of Love while 
the deceased Frank manifested in 
the form of a “Soultaker" (inspired 
by the title of that week's bad 
movie, starring Joe Estevez). 

After seven seasons on Come¬ 
dy Central and a feature film that 
was torpedoed by the very studio 
that released it, MST-3K was set 
adrift by the cable network in 1996. 
Fortunately, the Sci-Fi Channel- 
on the lookout for original program¬ 
ming to fill out its schedule of LOST 
IN SPACE reruns and HELLRAIS- 
ER I, II, III marathons—rescued the 
Peabody Award-winning series 
from TV Guide crossword puzzle 
obscurity. (“It was the show that we 
got the most questions about, even 
though we didn’t air it," Sci-Fi 
Channel assistant programmer Ray 
Cannella explained at the time.) 

The February 1996 debut on 


Sci-Fi Channel was a hit, and the 
network ordered a full season’s 22 
episodes. Cast members Michael 
J. Nelson (“Mike Nelson") and 
Kevin Murphy (“Tom Servo") were 
joined by writers Mary Jo Pehl 
("Pearl Forrester") and Bill Corbett, 
who not only replaced departing 
cast member Trace Beaulieu as the 
voice of “Crow T. Robot" but soon 
joined the cast as the pasty-faced 
alien “Observer (a.k.a. “Brain 
Guy"). In an early story arc from the 
season, Murphy also took on the 
role of evolutionarily advanced ape. 
“Professor Bobo,” Now the Satellite 
of Love traveled from planet to 


planet, pursued by Pearl’s rocket- 
fitted van. In 1998, the SOL settled 
orbit around Earth while Pearl and 
her cronies set up in her ancestral 
castle. 

“There were several factors" for 
abandoning the planet-hopping, ac¬ 
cording to Murphy, “not the least of 
which is that any network that 
shows our show usually just puts 
the episodes in order one time. If 
you’re wandering around, trying to 
keep the storyline going for an en¬ 
tire season got to be a little bit try¬ 
ing because, if you watch reruns, 
you’ll see these things playing 
hopelessly out of sequence, and 
they seem a little odd. You come in 
on a show you know and love, and 
suddenly there's a bunch of guys in 
ancient Rome. What the hell are 
they doing there?" 

Despite the changes, the basic 
premise remains the same: Mike 
and the bots are forced to watch 
cheesy movies by a mad scientist 
as part of a goofy experiment. 
SOULTAKER, the film skewered in 
the season opener, will be followed 
by such low-quality titles as Ted V 
Mikels' THE GIRL IN GOLD 
BOOTS, MERLIN S SHOP OF 
MYSTICAL WONDERS with Ernest 
Borgnine. FUTURE WAR, BLOOD- 
WATERS OF DR. Z, BOGEY 
CREEK 2: THE LEGEND CONTIN¬ 
UES, TRACK OF THE MOON- 
BEAST, and FINAL JUSTICE. 

Unfortunately, as MST-3K was 
preparing to launch its new season, 


BLACK SCORPION 

continued from previous page/ SCORPION series away from Showtime 
and position it as a possible entrant in the network or syndicated series 
sweepstakes. (There were also some casting changes, which resulted in 
the decision to go with Lintel as the lead.) The show was filmed on a bud¬ 
get of approximately $20 million. "I don't know of any other show that can 
say they [have) digital effects, special effects, stunts, comedy and drama 
[all in one]," noted producer Marta M. Mobley. Also interesting was Cor- 
man's decision not only to finance the show himself, but to film an entire 
series of 22 episodes without having a distributor lined up. 

He plans to sell the series to MIPCOM. the international television 
market. “I thought if somebody actually came to the market with 22 
shows and said. Here’s your entire year’s programming,' that if the pro¬ 
gramming was good, you'd get more money," Corman explained. And if 
the series catches on with the public, a second one will go before the 
cameras. All those involved have high hopes tor the series. Corman calls 
it a “comic book action show that is very sexy," with elements of humor. If 
the TV viewing audiences agrees, there just may be a new superhero in 
town for some time to come. 


Production Starts 



The Crow: 

Salvation 

Hoping to overcome the disap¬ 
pointing reaction to THE CROW: 
CITY OF ANGELS, Ed Pressman 
Films plunges on with the third 
film in the franchise, which is film¬ 
ing in Salt Lake City, Utah. Eric 
Mabius stars as the new Crow of 
the title, aided by Kirsten Ounst. 
Bharat Nailuri directs, from a 
script by Chip Johannessen (an 
alumni of THE X-FILES.) A previ¬ 
ously discussed script, by rocker 
Rob Zombie, may still be filmed at 
a later date, though not as part of 
the CROW franchise 

Rockyand 
BULLWINKLE 

Robert DeNiro co-produces this 
combo of live-action and anima¬ 
tion. based on the well-remem¬ 
bered cartoon. The cast includes 
DeNiro, Jason Alexander (as 
Boris Badanov), and Rene Russo 
(as Natasaha Fatale), Des 
McAnuff (who produced THE 
IRON GIANT and directed the 
“90s stage version of The Who’s 
Tommy ) directs 


news broke that Sci-Fi Channel 
would not be ordering episodes for 
next season. The announcement 
followed weeks of rumors: a time 
slot change to Sunday (11pm East¬ 
ern Time, with an 11am rebroad¬ 
cast on Saturday) had already led 
the Houston Chronicle to speculate 
that the end was near.The cancel¬ 
lation was apparently due to fluctu¬ 
ating ratings, and a new cadre of 
upper management since the net¬ 
work was acquired by former Para¬ 
mount and Fox Broadcasting hon¬ 
cho, Barry Diller. 

The announcement arrived be¬ 
fore this season had finished tap¬ 
ing. so the crew will have a chance 
to do a farewell episode. The pro¬ 
ducers at Best Brains have, in the 
past, orchestrated letter writing 
campaigns from their fans. But they 
opted not to fake that course this 
time, in order to maintain cordial re¬ 
lations with the network, which 
could result in future shows. Mean¬ 
while, there is a slim possibility that 
Best Brains could continue produc¬ 
ing MST-3K—if another network 
decided to pick up the show. 


6 











Video-gaming David Cronenberg style. 








By Alan Jones 


Internationally launched at 
the recent Berlin Film Festival, 

David Cronenberg’s new sci¬ 
ence fiction fantasy returns the 
cult Canadian director to the 
darkly original universe of his 
earlier works, especially 
VIDEODROME. Set in a near 
future, eXistenZ depicts a soci¬ 
ety in which video game de¬ 
signers are worshiped as super- 
stars and players can organical¬ 
ly enter their favorite pastime 
via a bio-port socket situated at 
the base of the spinal column. 

Miramax opens the film on the 
art house circuit April 23. 

Jennifer Jason Leigh plays 
game inventor Allegra Geller. 

Her latest amusement, eXis¬ 
tenZ, taps so deeply into its 
user’s fears and desires that it 
blurs the boundaries between 
reality and escapism. The 
phantasmagorically dis¬ 
eased thrill ride, packed 
with Cronenberg’s patented 
Shape of Rage notions and 
surrealist nightmares, real¬ 
ly takes flight when Allegra 
is made an assassination 
target by fanatics worried 
about the Antenna Re¬ 
search toy company's commitment to de¬ 
forming reality. Together with her body¬ 
guard Ted Pikul (Jude Law), Allegra must 
enter her latest brainchild and explore the 
areas altered by sinister industrial espi¬ 
onage to expose the villains. 

Naturally, nothing is what it seems in 
Cronenberg’s viscera I-versa Playstation 
realm where "You have to play the game to 
find out why you are playing the game.” 
For eXistenZ is a world where players use 
breathing MetaFlesh game pods that are 
built from synthetic DNA crossbred with 
the nervous systems of fish; where two 
headed amphibians roam the wilds; where 
mutant reptiles arc served up in a weird 
Chinese restaurant and tecth-firing guns 
made out of animal gristle are the combat 
weapon of choice. 

Ian Holm, Willem Dafoe, Christopher 
Eccleston and Sarah Policy also go along 




Jennifer Jason Leigh as video game Inventor Allegra Geller, plugged-ln 
Cronenberg-style, opening April 23 from New Line. Below: Cronenberg directs. 


for Cronenberg’s art-house 
horror ride in eXistenZ. 
The cutting edge Abom¬ 
inable Showman devised 
the projects after inter¬ 
viewing fugitive writer 
Salman Rushdie for a mag¬ 
azine feature. Cronenberg 
was struck by the idea of 
an artist who suddenly finds himself on a 
hit list for religious or philosophical reasons 
and is forced to flee into hiding. Noted Cro¬ 
nenberg, "That’s why I use the word fatwa 
in the screenplay. Because of my natural in¬ 
clinations I decided to make that person a 
game designer rather than a writer, thinking 
that game design could possibly ascend to 
the level of art.” 

However, the idea of entering the game 
to find out who has sabotaged it from the 
inside came much later as an afterthought. 
Said Cronenberg, “I thought it would be a 
movie about a game designer on the run 
from fanatics. Then, as I started to write it, I 
was desperate to get myself into the game 
and I thought — well, if I’m desperate to get 
into the game, I guess the audience is going 
to be desperate. Although it could be kind 
of an artful surrealistic thing not to go into 
the game, I couldn’t deny everybody that 


pleasure — and I wanted to 
know what I would come up 
with.” 

He continued, “It seemed to 
me that what people arc really 
doing in computer and video 
games is trying to get closer 
and closer to fusing themselves 
with the game. The idea that a 
game would plug right into 
your nervous system made per¬ 
fect sense to me, because 
putting on glasses and gloves is 
a crude attempt to fuse your 
nervous system with the game. 
So I went that little bit fur¬ 
ther — if I want to be the game, 
the game will also want to be 
me. It’s really an attempt to fuse 
the fantasy and make it real, 
physical and organic. It's the 
game made flesh.’’ 

The game eXistenZ became 
the perfect venue to embrace 
two of Cronenberg’s favorite 
themes; the extent to which we 


create our own levels of reality, and the idea 
of a creative act being a dangerous thing to 
the creator. Noted Cronenberg, "These are 
the two poles that arc the basis of eXistenZ. 
So thematically it connects to CRASH, 
VIDEODROME, NAKED LUNCH and M. 
BUTTERFLY.” 

Cronenberg also slyly repossesses his 
trademark “Body Horror” imagery. Once 
Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jude Law were on 
board as the central pawns, he encouraged 
both actors to research existentialism and 
gave them a suggested reading list includ¬ 
ing the academic works of Jean Paul Sartre, 
Nietzsche and Camus. And because the ac¬ 
tors change guises throughout the course of 
the film depending on whether they arc in 
the game or not, Cronenberg wanted them 
all to speak with different accents. Noted 
Cronenberg, "The reason for the different 
accents has to do with the idea of a charac¬ 
ter whose projection of himself plays the 
game; and how much of that is a fantasy, 
what he wants to be or is afraid to be. On 
another level, it’s a very existential ap¬ 
proach to acting, which is basically saying 
that to be alive is also to act. You create 
yourself. You create the character and the 
drama that you are. Consciously or uncon¬ 
sciously, that’s what we do.” j “j 


7 









George Lucas abandons 
parts 7-9: life’s too short. 



By Lawrence French 

A long time ago in a Galaxy far, far 
away: 

Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Re¬ 
public. The taxation of trade routes to outly¬ 
ing star systems is in dispute. Hoping to re¬ 
solve the matter with the blockade of deadly 
battleships, the greedy Trade Federation 
has stopped all shipping to the small planet 
of Naboo. While the Congress of the Repub¬ 
lic endlessly debates this alarming chain of 
events, the Supreme Chancellor has secretly 
dispatched two Jedi Knights, the guardians 
of peace, to settle the conflict. 

EXT. TATOOINE 

A disheveled boy, AN A KIN SKYWALK- 
ER, runs in from the junk yard. He is about 
nine years old, very dirty, and dressed in 
rags. 

So opens THE PHANTOM MENACE, 
George Lucas’ eagerly awaited first chapter 
in the STAR WARS saga. When Lucas first 
began work on the script, in 1995, he began 
with only some brief notes. Lucas explained 
to Lyn Hale, the publicist for THE PHAN¬ 


TOM MENACE, that the original outline 
for the three prcquels was only about 15 
pages long. 

“The whole early part was written to set 
up the [first STAR WARS) films that were 
made,” observed Lucas. “I had to sort of 
figure out who everybody was, where they 
came from, how they got to be where they 
were, and what the dynamic relationships 
were between everybody." 

Lucas took his outline and began work by 
expanding it to include approximately 50 
scenes for each of the three prequels. “I basi¬ 
cally have to come up with 150 scenes," as¬ 
serted Lucas. “If I come up with a few a day, 
towards the end of the process, I will really 
start going through the outline and filling in 
all the blanks—finishing it and putting in all 
the detail and that sort of thing. Then I start 
the hard part, the actual writing of the pages.” 

By beginning with such a rough outline, 
Lucas had the freedom to change characters 
and situations, none of which were ever set 
in stone in the first place. Lucas further ex¬ 
plained the flexible nature of his scripting 
process, stating, “When I have an idea for a 
character, usually the character comes alive 


and metamorphoses into something else, or 
another kind of character. If you take the 
first draft of STAR WARS, you can find the 
central characters that always existed, but 
they had different names, shapes or sizes. 
But the core of the character is still there 
and growing. It’s just trying to find the right 
persona to carry forward that personality.” 

A good example of this occurs in early 
drafts of STAR WARS, where the character of 
Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) is a leader 
of the rebellion on Yavin, who comes up with 
the idea of using small fighter ships to attack 
the Death Star. By the final script, Lucas has 
transformed Tarkin into an agent of the Em¬ 
peror, making him the actual builder of the 
Death Star, rather than one of it’s attackers. 
With such a slim outline for the prequels, it’s 
not much of a surprise to hear Lucas’ revela¬ 
tion that there was never any story material 
for the final three sequels—the ones that were 
supposed to continue the nine part saga, after 
the ending of RETURN OF THE JEDI. 

“It really ends at part six,” Lucas told Van¬ 
ity Fair. “When you see it in six parts you'll 
understand. I never had a story for the se¬ 
quels.” Of course, it was Lucas himself who 
always maintained there was at least an out¬ 
line for the final three chapters (episodes 7,8, 
& 9). It appears the real reason for his abrupt 
abandonment of the Force, is that in May of 
2005, (when the last of the current trilogy is 
scheduled for release), Lucas will turn 61. 
“I’ll be at a point in my age where to do an¬ 
other trilogy would take 10 years," said Lu¬ 
cas. “My oldest daughter was born during 
RETURN OF THE JEDI, and since then I 
slowed down quite a bit. 1 focused more on 
my family, and making THE PHANTOM 
MENACE is the first time I go back and try 
to do a movie of this scale, with this much in¬ 
tensity.” One of the reasons Lucas embarked 
on the current set of prequcls, was due to the 
new advances in technology he can utilize. “I 
get to do a lot of things now, that I couldn't 







































do before,” explained Lucas. “I can create 
things that weren't possible to create before. I 
was always—and I will be on THE PHAN¬ 
TOM MENACE—at the limit of what is pos¬ 
sible in terms of storytelling. Things have ad¬ 
vanced so far in the last 20 years, in terms of 
your ability to portray things on the screen.” 

Lucas also noted in a recent article for 
Premiere, that digital technology will allow 
him to get closer to his grandiose vision. 
“The idea of being able to explore my imag¬ 
ination and make it literal is exciting,” noted 
Lucas. “It moves me forward to try to get 
my visions onto the screen. When I was 
young, I had ambitions for some things to be 
brilliant, and when it came out less than bril¬ 
liant, 1 was very upset about it. Who knows, 
maybe it’s better that way—because the 
things that have come out exactly the way I 
wanted them, have not been very successful. 
I think I’ll be able to get closer to what i 
imagine things to be like with this film.” 

Among the many new treats Lucas has 
promised for THE PHANTOM MENANCE, 
is the portrayal of the Jedi Knights, in the 
days when there were thousands of them to 
guard the peace and justice of the Galaxy. 
The two Jedi Knights sent to Naboo at the 
outset of the story, are the young Obi-Wan 
Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Qui-Gon Jinn 
(Liam Neeson), Kenobi*s mentor, who holds 
a seat on the Jedi council (along with Yoda). 

Lucas disclosed some Jedi characteris¬ 
tics, while talking to Lyn Hale: "The Jedi 
are like negotiators,” explained Lucas. 
“They aren’t people that go out and blow 
up planets, or shoot down things. They’re 
more of a one-to-one combat type. In THE 
PHANTOM MENACE I wanted the form 
of the fighting and the role of the Jedi 
Knight to be special. More spiritual and 
more intellectual than just something like a 
fighter or a superhero.” 

In an effort to top the light saber battles 
of the first STAR WARS movies, Lucas is 


attempting to bring a more dynamic ele¬ 
ment to the new swordplay that will be oc¬ 
curring between the Jedi masters and their 
chief opponent, the maleficent Darth Maul, 
(played by martial arts expert Ray Park). 

“1 was looking for the kind of sword¬ 
fighting we had already done,” said Lucas, 
“but I wanted a more energized version of 
it, because we actually never really saw Je- 
di’s at work—we’d only seen old men (Obi- 
Wan), crippled halfdroid-halfmen (Darth 
Vader), and young boys (Luke). To see the 
Jedi fighting in their prime, I wanted a 
much more energetic and faster version of 
what we’d been doing.” 

The action of the new film will take place 
largely on three planets: the already familiar 
desert planet of Tatooinc, where the nine- 
year-old Anakin Skywalkcr is growing up; 
on Naboo, home to the royal Queen Ami- 
dala (Natalie Portman), as well as several 
swamp-dwelling creatures, such as the Nuna 
(a flightless bird, similar to an ostrich, but 
without the long neck) and the Peko Peko (a 
Pterodactyl-like bird with an immense 
wing-span); and finally, on Coruscant, the 
capitol of the Galactic Republic, where both 


fit It really ends at part 
six,” Lucas told Vanity 
Fair. “When you see it 
in six parts you’ll under¬ 
stand. I never had a 
story for the sequels. 5 J 


—George Lucas, director— 


the Senate and the Jedi Council convene. 

Interestingly enough. Senator Palpatine 
(Ian McDiarmid), who eventually becomes 
the Emperor—presumably by plotting with 
the Dark Lords of the Sith—represents Na¬ 
boo in the Galactic Senate and is a benign 
presence in THE PHANTOM MENACE. 

The actual design of Coruscant was pre¬ 
viewed in a brief shot seen at the end of the 
RETURN OF THE JEDI special edition, 
and it promises to be a truly spectacular 
city, full of streamlined ultra modern sky¬ 
scrapers, jutting several miles into the sky. 
The Jedi Council deliberates in a circular 
dome room, at the top of an imposing tem¬ 
ple that looks vaguely like the Chrysler 
Building, but with huge windows, that af¬ 
ford breathtaking views of Coruscant, 

As each new morsel of information 
about THE PHANTOM MENACE slowly 
leaks out, all the hype may eventually cause 
overwhelming expectations, that may be 
very hard to meet. Then, inevitably, the suc¬ 
cess engendered by the film will generate a 
backlash of criticism. For his part, Lucas 
professed these high expectations are not 
really affecting how he’s making the movie. 
“The fact that the film is so anticipated,” 
exclaimed Lucas, “allows me the freedom 
to be creative, in the way I'd like to be cre¬ 
ative, without having to worry about what 
people think. On one level. I'm going to get 
slaughtered, no matter what 1 do. On anoth¬ 
er level, some people will like it. After you 
make a lot of movies, no matter what you 
do, you’re going to get trashed on one side, 
while some people are going to love it.” □ 


Young Anakin (Ben Glass) with Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman). 



















Rodman 

By Dennis Fischer 


“Idle hands are the devil's 
playground” is not only a popu¬ 
lar saying, but also the premise 
behind Rodman Flender's new 
horror comedy. The film is 
about a teenage slacker whose 
demonically-possessed hand 
becomes a deadly threat. It’s 
produced by Team Todd (sister 
producers Suzanne and Jennifer 
Todd), and stars Devon Sawa, 
Vivica A. Fox, Jessica Alba, and 
Jack Nose worthy. 

Closer in intent to THE 
EVIL DEAD II than other killer 
hand movies (from THE 
BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS 
to THE CRAWLING HAND), 
IDLE HANDS hopes to attract 
the teen audience that flocked to 
the SCREAM movies, combin¬ 
ing screams of terror with those 
of laughter. TriStar opens the 
film April 23. 

IDLE HANDS is set on Hal¬ 
loween in the Northern Califor¬ 
nia town of Bolan, with Devon 
Sawa as Anton Tobias, the self- 
described “laziest kid in Ameri¬ 
ca.” But there’s a murderer 
loose in Bolan and all signs 
point to Anton. “Anton becomes 
aware that he cannot control his 















Flender directs a wild killer-hand romp. 


hand,” said Flender. “There’s a 
killer in town and people are dy¬ 
ing. He docs not know that he is 
in fact the killer. He kills 
his best friends, and he tries to 
stop himself from doing it, but 
the hand gets the better of him.” 

Flender has directed such 
films as LEPRECHAUN 2, IN 
THE HEAT OF PASSION, and 
THE UNBORN, and has lately 
been directing such television 
series as DAWSON’S CREEK, 
MILLENNIUM, DARK 
SKIES, and TALES FROM 
THE CRYPT. He has also 
worked as a producer (BODY 
CHEMISTRY, THE HAUNT¬ 
ING OF MORELLA, DEMON 
OF PARADISE) and as an actor 
(CARNOSAUR, BLACK 
SCORPION, and CRIMINAL 
HEARTS). 

Flender explained his ongo¬ 
ing association with horror. 
“Because 1 had done several 
things in the horror genre,” he 
said, “I am continually sent a lot 
of horror scripts, most of them 
with Roman numerals in the ti¬ 
tle. This is the first one which 
grabbed my attention. 1 thought 
‘yeah, this is great/ 

“After SCREAM came out, 
a lot of people started making 
teenage horror films. The thing 
that is so different about [IDLE 
HANDS] is the element of the 
supernatural. Where SCREAM 
took a postmodern attitude to¬ 
wards FRIDAY THE 13TH 
kinds of movies, this seems to 
have elements of THE EXOR¬ 
CIST and THE OMEN and all 
those great supcrnaturally- 
themed films of the ’70s and 
'80s. I thought that was differ¬ 
ent. I hadn't seen that before. 

“And it’s wacky. Every char¬ 
acter, even people who only 
have one or two lines, are all 
bizarre, all strange, and kind of 
wonderful. They are not neces¬ 
sarily psychotic or out of their 


am continually sent a 
lot of horror scripts,” said 
Flender. “This is the first one 
that grabbed my attention. I 
thought ‘y^ah, this is great.’” 



Devon Sawa as Anton, doing a Jim Carrey turn as a teen slacker whose hand 
gets the best of him, in a horror farce which TriStar opens nationwide April 23. 


minds, though some of them 
are.... 

“It’s like ‘Hamlet/ Every 
character in Hamlet is great, 
even Rosencrantz and Gilden- 
stern, even the walk-ons are all 
great, deep characters. This film 
is a lot like that in terms of 
every character is being well 
thought out and given a kind of 
quirky, offbeat twist." 

The cast is dominated by 
young, up-and-coming talent. 
Sawa has appeared in LONE¬ 
SOME DOVE, was Casper as 
a real boy in CASPER, 
played Robin Hood in the 
Showtime film ROBIN OF 
LOCKSLEY, and has 12 feature 
films to his credit. Playing the 


Druid High Priestess Debi 
Lccure, the vivacious Vivica A. 
Fox has been in such features as 
INDEPENDENCE DAY, 
BOOTY CALL, BATMAN 
AND ROBIN, and WHY DO 
FOOLS FALL IN LOVE. Jessi¬ 
ca Alba as Anton’s dreamgirl 
Molly, has worked on the recent 
Australian version of FLIPPER, 
and has appeared in LEAVING 
LAS VEGAS and P.U.N.K.S. 
Playing Anton’s heavy metal 
neighbor who proves wise to 
the ways of satanism. Jack 
Noseworthv’s credits include 
EVENT HORIZON, ENCINO 
MAN, BARB WIRE, and 
BREAKDOWN as well as the 
MTV series DEAD AT 21. 


Of the casting, Flender not¬ 
ed, “I wanted good actors who 
could do comedy rather than 
sketch comedians. Devon is 
amazing. This will only work if 
we have basically a tccnagcd 
Jim Carrey, someone with that 
kind of physical dexterity and 
expression. I think we’ve got 
that with Devon. Every day he 
comes up with stuff that floors 
me. I’d seen him on WILD 
AMERICA, and then I’d seen 
him on some videotape tests, 
casting tapes. When I saw De¬ 
von in those tapes, I knew this 
movie could work.” . 

Flender also researched past 
“hand movie” efforts. “I looked 
at THE BEAST WITH FIVE 
FINGERS and others,” he said. 
“We try to pay a little homage 
to all the hand movies. One of 
the things that was so great 
about SCREAM was that it re¬ 
ally said, ‘OK, we’re in this cul¬ 
ture, and horror films are part of 
this culture, and we’re aware of 
that/ We're doing that in this 
movie as well. There is an 
awareness of THE BEAST 
WITH FIVE FINGERS and 
Oliver Stone’s THE HAND, 
EVIL DEAD II” 

Though a comedy, Flender 
hopes to balance both the hu¬ 
mor and the horror with makeup 
effects provided by the Greg 
Cannom group. “In terms of the 
gore level, we obviously can’t 
do something that Lucio Fulci 
could,” Flender said, “just in 
terms of standards and the rat¬ 
ing system and all that. In some 
of the goriest scenes in the 
movie, wc don’t actually sec 
what happens. I’ve chosen to 
play them off of people’s faces, 
somebody watching this, which 
I actually think is much more 
horrifying because you arc see¬ 
ing how it affects somebody 
rather than the gruesomcncss of 
the effect itself. Our actors are 


11 








so talented and so good that 
they help make that all the more 
horrifying." 

In terms of the lone Flendcr 
hopes to achieve, he compares 
it to Jonathan Demme's 
SOMETHING WILD, “Be¬ 
cause it just switched gears and 
you didn’t know where it was 
going. IDLE HANDS is a 
movie that switches gears. One 
of the things I'm hoping to do 
is just to surprise people. With 
a lot of movies today, you 
watch the first five minutes 
and you pretty much know 
how they arc going to end. I'm 
trying to make something 



that's a little unpredictable, 
something where you’re laugh- 
ing one minute, screaming an¬ 
other minute. 

“It’s funny when you ask 
about comedy and horror. The 
first film 1 did for Roger (Cor- 
nan] was a movie called THE 
UNBORN, which was pretty 
much a straight horror film, 
and I wanted to inject some 
humor in it. and I was talking 
to Roger about it. and I’ll nev¬ 
er forget something he said to 
me. He said. ‘Always give the 
people something to laugh at, 
or else they will find some¬ 
thing to laugh at.' Those words 
arc very true.” 

Flendcr began his directorial 
career working for Corman, and 
when asked what he had learned 
from this past master of the 
genre, he responded, “1 think 
Roger is certainly a pioneer of 
this genre with LITTLE SHOP 
OF HORRORS and BUCKET 
OF BLOOD. I went back and 
watched LITTLE SHOP again 
before I jumped into this, be¬ 
cause tonewise it successfully 
hit the right note. In LITTLE 
SHOP, every character is 
wacked out. It’s got this strange 
tone. It’s horrifying. Horrifying 
things happen in it, and hilari- 


(<We tried to pay a little homage 
to all the hand movies,” said 
Flender. “There is an awareness 
of the THE BEAST WITH FIVE 
FINGERS and THE HAND...” 



Devon Sawa as Anion and Seth Green blast Anton s pesky disembodied hand 
(left) In a microwave, a horror romp a la Corman s LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS. 


ous things happen in it too. That 
was really a model for this 
film.” 

Graduates of Corman's “earn 
while you learn" approach to 
filmmaking have had a tendency 
to either become very cost con¬ 
scious or profligate spenders. 
Commented Flender, “Yeah, it’s 
funny. I try be very cost con¬ 
scious and stay on schedule be- 
cause it’s something I’ve 
learned to do and I don’t want 
anyone mad at me over the bud¬ 
get. Others tend to completely 
rebel and go in the opposite di¬ 
rection like James Cameron." 

Flender doesn’t think that 
his past experiences with low- 
budget filmmaking have altered 
his style of filmmaking. “I 
think the material dictates the 
style,” he said, “so I don’t ap¬ 
proach directing PARTY OF 
FIVE the way I approach di¬ 
recting this. It’s just a different 
visual vocabulary, the tone is so 
different. I did an episode of 
DAWSON’S CREEK this year, 
which was sort of a bit of a par¬ 
ody of SCREAM in a small 
way where there is a killer in a 
small town. That was a little bit 
of a warmup for this movie in a 
way in that it had copied and 
we tried to put in a few scary 


moments as well. It didn't quite 
go as far as this movie goes. It’s 
great to really have enough 
freedom to go all out.” 

Regarding working in tele¬ 
vision, Flender noted, "I love 
directing television because I 
have worked with some of the 
best casts and the best scripts I 
have ever worked with. In 
terms of character development 
and dialogue, what they are do¬ 
ing in television now is fantas¬ 
tic. Ultimately, television is not 
a director’s medium, it’s a 
writer-producer's medium, and 
the job of the TV director is to 
fulfill the creator’s vision, the 
executive producer’s vision. 
Here I feel like I have a little 
more freedom.” 

Another advantage is that 
features are usually given more 
time to film than your average 
dramatic scries episode. Never¬ 
theless, Flender pointed out, “It 
has less to do with time, be¬ 
cause I always feel crunched. 
There is never enough time. 
Even though 1 pretty much did 
both Corman movies in as many 
shooting days or fewer shooting 
days of this entire movie, that 
crunch feeling is still there. You 
feel there is never enough time. 
The freedom in movies versus 


television is a little bit more 
about my vision, and it is still a 
collaboration. Devon brings so 
much, but it’s nice to create a 
world from scratch rather than 
step into the world of CHICA¬ 
GO HOPE or MILLENIUM, or 
whatever show I’ve done." 

Flender offered his take on 
the main characters: “Anton, 
our lead played by Devon 
Sawa, is basically a slacker. 
This movie is a little bit like 
CLERKS meets THE EXOR¬ 
CIST He just hangs out, gets 
high, watches TV, and doesn’t 
think about anything. That’s 
pretty much his life. The film 
title takes the saying, ‘Idle 
hands are the devil’s play¬ 
ground' literally. His hands arc 
about as idle as they can be. His 
hands are a fertile soil for evil 
forces to inhabit. 

“He’s got two friends who 
are also slackers. One of them is 
a little more motivated because 
he also sells pot as well as 
smoking it. Vivica Fox is sort of 
the Van Helsing character of 
this movie. She comes from a 
line of Druidic priestesses who 
hunt down and fight evil forces. 
She is on a mission to try and 
stop the gates of hell from open¬ 
ing up. She’s pretty wacky, too. 
She's got a raven named Qua¬ 
train. She lives in an Airstream 
motorhome, travelling around 
the country, trying to find evil 
wherever it is." 

During the 10-week shoot, 
Sawa kept trying to break up the 
cast with comments about “hey, 

I need a hand here.’’ However, 
the movie itself tries to avoid 
that approach to humor. The 
reason for his hand becoming 
possessed is never made clear, 
but is simply a consequence of 
his idleness. 

Explained Flender, “The 
theme would be the title, ‘idle 
hands are the devil’s play¬ 
ground,’ so keep yourself busy. 
One of the characters, a guy 
named Randy who is Anton’s 
neighbor in the film, wonderful¬ 
ly played by Jack Noseworlhy 
from EVENT HORIZON, is 
this heavy metal dude who is al¬ 
ways working on his Ford mon¬ 
ster truck. He tells Anton, ‘Keep 
yourself busy, keep your hands 
busy,’ and he doesn’t gel pos¬ 
sessed. He’s always working on 
his truck, even if you are just 
working on your truck, keep 
yourself busy." 




12 





















THE BEST WITH FIVE FINGERS 


Magician Christopher Hart on his career sideline, 
specializing as a (< hand performer ” in horror films. 


By Chuck Wagner 

Lei your fingers do the walking. Ma¬ 
gician Christopher Hart has, and has 
achieved fame. Or at least his hand has. 

“I had to audition for the ADDAMS 
FAMILY movie,” Hart explained, “but I 
didn't have to audition for the sequel. For¬ 
tunately, I'm getting a name now in Holly¬ 
wood. When they were looking for a hand 
for IDLE HANDS. 1 had two or three dif¬ 
ferent producers recommend me. So I had 
a script sent to niv agent. I'm becoming 
like the Sharon Stone of hand actors." 

Hart’s hand proved amazingly expres¬ 
sive as Thing in THE ADDAMS FAMI¬ 
LY movie, but Hart’s hand was being 
asked to play a different kind of hand in 
IDLE HANDS. 

“In this horror movie, this hand is very 
different," said Hart, flexing his famous 
hand to demonstrate. “I had to prove to 
the director that I had other ideas of ways 
to use my hand. This hand is completely 
evil. There's nothing friendly about it. So 
I developed other nuances that would 
give an evil, sinister quality to it." 

One obvious question is, where is 
Hart during filming and how is his body 
hidden, or removed from footage? 

“There are different techniques they 
use,” he said. “Sometimes, if it's a tight shot 
of the hand, they just frame my body out. 
There's a two-and-a-half hour makeup job 
they do on my hand every day when I’m 
filming, making it look evil, blistered and 
boiled, with pus oozing out of my wounds. 

“If it’s a longer range shot, sometimes I'll 
have a green sleeve on, or a sleeve which al¬ 
lows them to use a computer to remove my 
body. But basically, a shot's usually shot 
twice. They’ll shoot me doing a scene with 
the actors, where I'm crawling along the 
floor. Then I'll step out and they'll shoot it 
again, so when they erase my body they 
have a background to fill in. It’s very te¬ 
dious, time-consuming, technical work." 

Sometimes, Hart had to contort his body 
away from his hand to meet the needs of the 
shot. This can be uncomfortable. But at least 
there’s no dialogue to learn. Hart laughed. 
“There are no lines, obviously. It’s interest¬ 



Hart. wearing hand makeup by the Greg Cannom group, 
puts the monster through its paces for an effects shot. A 
stint as Thing in THE ADDAMS FAMILY started it all. 


ing in that the scripts for my hand usually al¬ 
ways just say, ‘scampers to the door,’ or ‘the 
hand crawls along the floor,' or ‘performs a 
certain action.' So it's really my challenge to 
make it interesting. A hand has no expres¬ 
sion, it has no eyes. After awhile, it becomes 
kind of boring. So you find some nuance, 
some bit of business to do. 

“I’ve discovered that it’s mostly the hand 
interacting with other objects or other people 
that make it interesting, that convey a person¬ 
ality. But there's scenes in this movie that al¬ 
low this. In one scene, one of the characters 
shoves her velvet red shoe into a fan to slop 
the fan blades spinning so she can escape 
through an air conditioning shaft. But (he 
hand crawls up onto the shoe. It's going to re¬ 
move it so she gets severed by this blade. But 
what happens is the hand lulls there for a sec¬ 
ond on the velvet shoe. It strokes, sort of se¬ 
ductively, this red velvet. It's sadistic of this 
hand to lease and play with the red velvet be¬ 


fore removing the shoe.” 

Hart's hand is actually bigger than the 
hand of actor Devon Sawa's, which he 
plays. Noted Hart, “The way you get 
around that, in terms of being realistic, is 
when Devon cuts off his hand to stop 
himself from killing, he throws it in the 
microwave. He starts to nuke it, and it 
starts to blister and boil and burn up and 
swell. It takes on a physical difference 
and possessed evilness allows it to devel¬ 
op a life and shape of its own." 

Of course, a famous hand has to be 
pampered and kept fit. The arm above 
must usually be shaved. “I get weird 
looks when I sign things in stores,” Hart 
said, referring to the reaction a partially- 
bald arm usually gets. “I mainly make 
my living being a magician. That’s what I 
love to do, being on stage performing." 

Hart's right hand is the one that gets all 
the movie work. The left hand doesn't usu¬ 
ally work, except when doing magic, al- 
thouch his left hand played an evil hand in 
the Fox TV movie THE BODY POLITIC, 
based on the Clive Barker short story de¬ 
tailing a revolution of human hands. 

“It was pretty sedate because it was 
for television, so they really couldn’t 
make it gory. Mick Garris directed that, 
and I had met and worked with him on a 
video he was shooting for the Addams Fam¬ 
ily with Michael Jackson. It never aired, but 
he remembered me from that.” 

Hart's most harrowing experience during 
filming IDLE HANDS involved the use of 
Krazy Glue to apply his makeup fingernails, 
which overheated when applied a little too 
liberally. “1 never, ever felt intense pain as I 
did then," he said. “It was searing, like acid 
burning through my fingertips. You know, 
you get to a point with pain where you don't 
care about your surroundings anymore. I 
started screaming on the set?" 

Fortunately for Hart, his hand was not 
burned...at least not too much. “The irony 
was they didn’t use that take," Hart said 
with a chuckle. 

The life of the hand actor can be an ad- 
venture, or — to para ph rase Omar 
Khayyam — “The moving hand acts, and 
having acted, moves on." 


13 





By Joe Fordham 

It’s been 54 years since Uni¬ 
versal Studios last gave serious 
screen time to the Mummy, ar¬ 
guably their third most popular 
horror icon after Franken¬ 
stein's Monster and Count 
Dracula, The character was 
first brought to the screen by 
Carl Laemmlc Jr. with Boris 
Karloff in 1932. After that, it 
was done to death in four se¬ 
quels, three of them with Lon 
Chaney Jr. Then it was bashed 
to bits by the Three Stooges 
and Abbott and Costel¬ 
lo, amongst others. Finally, 
after all that, it was given a 
new lease on life by Hammer 
Films in the '60s. 

The Mummy’s history has 
been a checkered one at best. 

But the ancient prince will rise 
again, for the fourteenth time on 
a full-length feature screen, 

May 7. 

Universal filmed their new 
epic reinvention of the series in 
Morocco and on soundstages at 
Shcpperton Studios in England. 

It’s their first straight-on, non¬ 
comic Mummy film since THE 
MUMMY'S CURSE in 1944. 

The new MUMMY, directed 
by Stephen Sommers for Alphaville produc¬ 
tions, stars Brendan Fraser (GEORGE OF 
THE JUNGLE), Rachel Weisz (SWEPT 
FROM THE SEA) and John Hannah (SLID¬ 
ING DOORS), with Arnold Vosloo (HARD 
TARGET) filling Karloff’s 3000-year-old 
shoes as Imhotep/Ardath Bey. 

According to producer Jim Jacks, he 
and his co-producer, Sean Daniels, early- 
on dubbed their latest take on mummy lore 
‘■Raiders of the Lost Mummy.” After 16 
weeks of prep with Sommers and produc¬ 
tion designer Allan Cameron, plus 86 days 
of shooting with director of photography 
Adrian Biddle, Jacks still concurs with this 
early referent, ‘it’s not that inaccurate, al¬ 
though now I think the movie is a little 
more like GUNGA DIN than it is 



Universal gives their 
monster franchise a 
“Raiders” makeover. 



Brendan Fraser as French Foreign Legkmalre Rick O'Connell, diecovering 
the sunken Egyptian city of Hamanuptra and the mummified evil of Imhotep 

RAIDERS. Cary Grant, for instance, is an 
out-and-out comic character in that film. 

John Hannah, in our movie, is very much 
in the tradition of Grant or David Niven. 

We also have the elements of a French For¬ 
eign Legion movie and CASABLANCA. 

We had a lot of fun with it. We were trying 
very hard to make things as exotic and as 
romantic as possible.” 

Which is not to say this version of THE 
MUMMY will be without its share of tra¬ 
ditional mummy ingredients. “We don’t 
really use the tana leaves," Jacks com¬ 
mented, referring to the revivifying brew 
instigated in the first 1940 sequel, THE 
MUMMY’S HAND. Anck-es-cn-Amon is 
back as the reincarnated princess, object of 
Imhotep’s affections, although she influ¬ 


ences the plot in a more 
streamlined, action-oriented 
way. 

“We decided not to make our 
female lead the reincarnation of 
Anck-es-en-Amon because it 
seemed a little coincidental," 
Jacks explained. “We felt it 
made the story more complicat¬ 
ed than it needed to be to really 
play that out. We decided in¬ 
stead to make Rachel Weisz’s 
character the first woman 
Imhotep lays eyes on as he 
comes alive. He decides he’s 
going to use her bodily fluids 
and organs to bring Anck-es-en- 
Amon back to life.” 

As for the mummy himself, 
the common concept of the tall, 
bandaged marauder will cer¬ 
tainly be served in a new, up¬ 
dated fashion—even though 
this character was actually 
more heavily popularized by 
Tom Tyler in MUMMY’S 
HAND and Lon Chaney Jr. in 
the films that followed the 
Karloff original. Jacks ob¬ 
served, “Bandage Head was 
not until the sequels. In fact 
that’s not Imhotep, it’s Kharis. 
We do have bandaged mum¬ 
mies in our film, but it’s an 
army of guys that come to help 
Imhotep in the end.” 

Imhotep's legions are being created by 
the digital artists at Industrial Light and 
Magic, who are also developing technology 
to bring Imhotep back from the dead. "We 
have about 130 special effects shots," said 
Jacks. “And they’re big effects shots. We 
had to create some new technology for this, 
basically a walking, talking man with 
pieces missing. British makeup effects su¬ 
pervisor Nick Dudman worked with ILM to 
create the mummy, based on Arnold 
Vosloo 's performance. Arnold is where the 
mummy starts off and ends up, then there 
are stages where it’s Arnold with pieces 
missing, and then there are stages where it’s 
going to be a total ILM computer-generated 
construction.” 


14 


















Arnold Vosioo as Imhotep, the Mummy, fully restored and about to sacrifice Cairo librarian Rachel Welsz. 


With visual effects underway in San 
Rafael, and Stephen Sommers working 
with his editor. Bob Ducsay, THE MUM¬ 
MY shuffled towards its tentative May 7th 
premiere. That's an intimidating time for 
any opening, as the shadow cast by STAR 
WARS looms. “We’re ducking and diving 
with them,” admitted Jim Jacks. “I think 
we're going to have a movie that stands up 
with them, but we want to have enough dis¬ 
tance so we can at least establish our movie 
before that monolith hits the market. Even 
going a couple weeks before is tricky. Our 
theory is if we can get in there, we think 
audiences will really like our movie, we'll 
get two big weeks and then, hopefully, 
we'll be well enough established so, if you 
can't get in to see STAR WARS, you’ll go 
see THE MUMMY.” 

While Jacks is cautiously optimistic, he 
is also too experienced to make predictions 
at this half-formed stage. Jacks has been 
with the project throughout most of its ges¬ 
tation, which is said to be somewhere be¬ 
tween 10 and 12 years. Jacks recalled, 
“When I came to Universal as 
an executive they were wanting 
to remake THEMUMMY. It’s 
really been for us [at Alphav- 
illej, oh, eight or nine years 
pretty much full-time trying to 
get it together.” 

Screenwriting credits are 
currently under arbitration by 
the Writers Guild, a very sensi¬ 
tive and complicated process. 

One Internet source has listed 
eight different writers who 
have been associated with the 
project dating back to 1988. 

Like Imhotep himself, the pro¬ 
ject has been reborn many 
times, in many different hues. 


Jacks recalled the evolution of the final 
version. “We went through a lot of direc¬ 
tors at different times. We had people like 
Clive Barker, Joe Dante, George Romero. 
Mick Garris. A lot of people were involved 
at different times, but they were all differ¬ 
ent kinds of versions. I mean, Clive Bark¬ 
er’s THE MUMMY was kind of a Hell- 
raiser Mummy.’ Joe Dante had a John 
Sayles script that was actually quite good, 
but it was contemporary and there was al¬ 
ways a problem with that. Also, at that 
time the studio really wanted to do it as a 
low budget. $15 million, grab-it-and-growl 
kind of movie to exploit the title. Then 
there was kind of a shift around the time 
MCA was bought by Seagrams, and there 
became a real desire to exploit the Univer¬ 
sal monsters, to really make some good 
*A’ movies with them. All of a sudden it 
went from being a low-budget venture to 
one where they were willing to spend 
some real money.” 

Jacks recalled how screenwriter Kevin 
Jarre (TOMBSTONE, GLORY, and one of 


fit We have tons of 
action, a lot of comedy, 
and, I think, some 
good scares. It seems 
to me that’s every¬ 
thing it should be. JJ 


—Producer Jim Jacks— 


the executive producers on this version of 
THE MUMMY) was brought in to provide 
the draft that lead to Stephen Sommers’ in¬ 
volvement. “[Universal executives] Mark 
Platt, Stacey Snyder and Casey Silver all 
read Kevin’s script. They liked it, but it was 
a very dark, scary version of THE MUM¬ 
MY and they decided it was not the take 
they wanted to go on. The reality was Uni¬ 
versal really wanted a big event movie, and 
if we were going to do that it really had to 
be another version. The movie we’re now 
making is going to be PG-13. In Kevin’s 
script it was borderline whether it was go¬ 
ing to be l R’ or ‘NC-17.’ 1 mean, it was like 
Coppola’s DRACULA. If'was a very fine 
script and we may do it some day in one of 
the sequels, but it was really, really dark. 
Very, very scary. Very upsetting. 

“About this time I got a call from Todd 
Harris, an agent who I do a lot of business 
with at William Morris, who represents 
Stephen Sommers. He told me Steve was a 
huge Mummy fan. He'd read the Kevin 
Jarre script and liked it, but it was not the 
script he wanted to shoot. I liked Stephen’s 
movies, so we met and talked about his 
take, which was very clearly high adven¬ 
ture, and fun, you know? Fun, fun, fun. We 
pitched this to Mark Platt, Stephen worked 
about three months on the script, we 
turned this in to Casey Silver, who called 
up the next morning and said, ‘Let’s try to 
make it.'" 

Universal archives show the budget for 
the 1932 MUMMY as $196,161. Jacks’ 
comment was, “We’re higher,” but he 
made no bones about the stakes 
involved this time around. 
“Ours is very much a big event 
summer movie. It’s not even 
close to $100 million, but, let’s 
put it this way, it's over $60 
million. It's tough to make a 
movie for less than $60 million 
if you have $21 million in the 
effects budget. But we’re very 
excited about the movie and I 
think we pay off everything we 
set up. We have tons of action, 
a lot of comedy and 1 think 
some good scares. It seems to 
me that’s everything it should 
be, but you never know. 
Movies are funny things.” □ 


Vosioo conjures a* Imhotep in Mummy makeup designed by Nick Dudman. 



T 









The Wachowski Bros, launch 
sci-fi for the new millennium. 



Keanu Rnvh 901 s pluck0d from hit cocoon In 
THE MATRIX by frtodom fighters’ with to 
remove mankind's dependence on a cyber tit. 


By Dennis Fischer 

It’s ihc future and Earth 
is dismal. A massive com¬ 
puter complex enslaves the 
population by keeping 
everyone in a virtual reality 
resembling the late 20th 
century. Rebels Nco 
(Keanu Reeves) and Trinity 
(Carrie-Ann Moss) follow 
the lead of Morpheus 
(Lawrence Fishburnc) to 
set humanity free. Arrayed 
against them arc deadly ar¬ 
tificial intelligence agents, 
possessed with superhu¬ 
man fighting abilities — 
this is the premise of THE 
MATRIX, the eagerly 
awaited science fiction 
blockbuster written and di¬ 
rected by Larry and Andy 
Wachowski, the auteurs of 
BOUND. Warner Bros, 
opened the film nationwide 
April 12. 

One of the new faces in 
THE MATRIX is that of Aus¬ 
tralian Hugo Weaving, best 
known in America for his work 
in PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF 
THE DESERT, who plays the 
almost omnipotent Agent 
Smith, a construct of the Matrix 
computer designed to police 
virtual reality and to terminate 
agitators. Dressed in a suit, tie, 
and sunglasses. Smith has a 
steely, stoic presence, represent¬ 
ing the ultimate in formidable 
special agents. 

During a break in filming. 


Weaving explained the film’s 
background. “You can travel in 
and out of the Matrix through 
the people who are in the Ma¬ 
trix. They’re kind of entrance 
points. [Agent Smith is) there to 
track down rebellious charac¬ 
ters like Neo and Morpheus. 
People who are trying to wake 
everyone out of their slavery. 

The Wachowskis have fil¬ 
tered their vision of the future 
through the idiom of Hong 
Kong kung-fu films, and Weav¬ 
ing is enjoying playing a villain. 


“There’s a lot of kung-fu," 
he said. “A lot of punching, 
headbutting and shooting.” 

The Aussie actor had 
no prior experience in ac¬ 
tion films, and appreciated 
the preparation he was giv¬ 
en during a three-month 
training period. “The fights 
were originally going to be 
at the head of the sched¬ 
ule,” he related, “but due to 
injury they had to be put 
back which has meant 
we’ve had to keep up with 
our training.” 

“Fantastic,” is how 
Weaving described work¬ 
ing with the Wachowskis. 
“Really wonderful,” he 
said. “They work very well 
as a team, and are incredi¬ 
bly well prepared. They 
storyboarded it, yet they 
don’t seem to pre-plan all 
that. 

“Plus I like their sense 
of humor. If you met them 
in the street, you wouldn’t think 
they were directors.” 

Weaving found amusement, 
too, in his role as Agent Smith. 
“He’s a seemingly indestruc¬ 
tible character without feeling 
who becomes more and more 
passionate and angry because 
he has to stay within the Matrix 
in order to catch these people 
and he doesn’t like it. He starts 
to smell them because they’re 
human beings. He starts to be 
more like them and he doesn’t 
like feeling emotion. He starts 


16 
































The film's startling Imagery sprung from the Wachowskls' collaboration with 
comic book artist Geof Darrow. Below: Rescued and hooked up to the halfway 
house of Morpheus' lab. Above: Production design of THE MATRIX cocoons. 


to have ideas and philosophies 
about things. It’s a funny kind 
of amusing journey for him." 

Weaving’s lack of experi¬ 
ence kept him from being intim¬ 
idated by the thought of all the 
action that would be required of 
him; however, after the first day 
of shooting, he found his no¬ 
tions about action filmmaking 
shattered. “These fights are 
very difficult, they’re time con¬ 
suming, they’re very painful 
and yet you still laugh through 
them. You have to,” Weaving 
said, almost as if to reassure 
himself. 

Perhaps Weaving’s greatest 
difficulty was not to make kung- 
fu noises while performing the 
role. "You’re always going, 
‘who, ha, ho!’” he said with a 
laugh, “and I get pulled up, and 
they say, ‘Hugo, you’re going to 
have to do it again. You’ve been 
going ‘who ha, ho’ again.’” 

On the set. Weaving had 
bandages on his hands. 
‘‘They’re all bleeding,’* 
he explained. “Keanu is 
wearing a pad for pro¬ 
tecting his chest. I had 
to punch him in the 
chest, and he had to fly 
back and smash into a 
wall which collapsed. 


That’s how powerful Agent 
Smith is. His padding ripped 
open my knuckles.” 

Another major character in 
THE MATRIX is Cypher, 
played by Joe Pantoliano, the 
accomplished character actor 
who has been in everything 
from EMPIRE OF THE SUN to 
RISKY BUSINESS. Pantoliano 
walked away with the Wa- 
chowski brothers’ BOUND, and 
he brings the same nervous en¬ 
ergy to THE MATRIX. 

As Pantoliano sees it, 
“Cypher is a survivor. He’s a 
guy who’s been a part of this 
master plan of Morpheus’s for 
almost 15 years, and 1 think was 
a real believer in what he was 
doing in the beginning. I wanted 
to be like him, to emulate him. I 
probably had hopes of being the 
One. Seeing these guys dying 
one after the other, I realize it’s 
not such a great job after all. At 
this point in his life he’s think- 


HUGO WEAVING , AGENT $ HH T _H_ 

“Smith’s a seemingly indestructible character 
without feeling who has to stay within the 
Matrix to catch the rebels and doesn’t like it. 
He starts to smel them, because they’re hunan.” 






















i, / 



KEANU REEVES 

The star on why his Neo 
is no Johnny Mnemonic. 


By Frederick C. Szebin 

The last time reluctant action 
hero Keanu Reeves took on a 
high tech future, the lackluster 
JOHNNY MNEMONIC was 
the result. Apparently not one to 
say never again, Reeves took on 
virtual reality once more in the 
Larry and Andrew Wachowski s 
follow-up to their well-received 
drama, BOUND. In THE MA¬ 
TRIX Reeves is Thomas Ander¬ 
son, a man who is suspicious of 
the late-twentieth century world 
around. He tries to undo the 
alienation he feels by searching 
for the answer to a single ques¬ 
tion: what is the Matrix? Once 
he finds that answer, he believes 
he may fit into the world after 
all. But what that answer will 
do is totally uproot his world, 
show it for the computer-gener¬ 
ated lie that it is, and replace 
Thomas Anderson with the 
guise of Neo, a computer-hack¬ 
ing terrorist in a world run by 
evil supercomputers kept on 


their toes by the infamous Mor¬ 
pheus (Lawrence Fishburn). 

To be able to fight the good 
fight, Neo has kung-fu abilities 
downloaded into him, which 
enables the filmmakers to bring 
Hong Kong-style action to 
Western movies. For the cast, 
though, months of grueling 
physical training took place un¬ 
der the tutalage of Hong Kong 
fight master Yuen Wo Ping. 

“I guess he’s second genera¬ 
tion,” says Reeves. "His father 
was one of the original fight 
choreographers from Hong 
Kong. The brothers had story 
boards of fight sequences that 
they wanted to see with certain 
punches, kicks and flips. Wo 
Ping brought in his wire team 
and worked with the actors, saw 
what we were good at, what we 
weren’t good at and trained 
around that. He’s a very sweet 
man. Wo Ping has this wonder¬ 
ful laugh, and he would laugh 
whenever anyone got punched 
in the head. It was an honor to 




Reeves as Thomas Anderson, reborn as Neo. virtual reality freedom fighter, 
melding cerebral science fiction with the klnetlcism of Hong Kong Kung Fu. 


me because I’m a fan of his 
work. It was great training with 
him, to be exposed to their tech¬ 
niques and styles of fighting. 

Reeves is quick to point out 
that for all of the hardcore ac¬ 
tion and high flying butt kick¬ 
ing, THE MATRIX has a mean¬ 
ing within all the mayhem. 

“One of the themes in the 
film is about losing one’s indi¬ 
viduality in a group or commu- 


Filming Reaves on produdlon designer Owen Pete..on*of«c building rigged lot v irtue! really demolition 


nity. That tickled my fancy. 
There is also the thought of 
what is truth, what is simulated? 
It’s about the quest for truth and 
compassion and protecting one¬ 
self, or deciding when does one 
give oneself over to the exterior 
world. It’s fighting for individu¬ 
ality against systems, against 
sameness, against control. One 
of the things about this script 
is that the brothers, Larry and 
Andrew, are very sensible peo¬ 
ple. They are just good people, 
and the film has such a good 
heart.” 

Within that heart is the ex¬ 
plosive action best suited to 
comic books as the main char¬ 
acters fight, flip and fly in the 
faux reality the Matrix has cre¬ 
ated for them. 

“I see some of the framing of 
Frank Miller,” Reeves said. 
"There’s a lot of perspective in¬ 
fluence from Miller as well as 
Japanese angles and perspec¬ 
tives. I know what the brothers 
are talking about, and I can see 
it. The trick is to give it the 
heart and soul they want, giving 
flesh to a cartoon, soul to a ma¬ 
chine. That’s what acting in 
films like this can be some¬ 
times. It’s like synthesizing 






























ing, ‘Fuck this. I’m sick and 
tired of following this guy's pipe 
dream and putting myself in 
danger. The Matrix is a lot better 
place to be than living in the 
Neb. being cold all the time and 
knowing that the sun has died 
and knowing that it can never go 
back to how it was.’" 

Pantoliano is very enthusias¬ 
tic about working with the Wa- 
chowskis again, “They're inno¬ 
vative," he said. “If it wasn't 
written by them, 1 wouldn’t 
have done it. There’s something 
about these guys with the mil¬ 
lennium approaching, the end 
of a century of filmmaking. 
What they’re doing has not 
been done, taking different gen¬ 
res and mixing them all togeth¬ 
er.” 

Cypher is the film’s Judas, 
the one who betrays the others, 
because he decides that a virtual 
reality fantasy is better than 
coping with the grim truths that 
Morpheus has exposed him to. 
Explained Pantoliano, “In the 
beginning he believes in all this 
stuff and then he makes a deal 
with the devil and sells his soul 
for that bag of gold." 

In the Wachowski script 
Cypher rationalizes his betrayal 
this way: "They’re going to in¬ 
sert my body. I’ll go back to 
sleep and when I wake up. I’ll 
be fat and rich and I won’t re¬ 
member a goddamn thing. It’s 
the American dream." 

Pantoliano admitted that 
when he read the script, he 
couldn't really understand it. “I 
read it five times and I didn't 
get it. I had executives from 
Warner Brothers calling me up 
saying, ‘Are you gonna do it?’ I 
said, ‘Yeah.’ This is the guys 
from Warner Brothers, ‘Do you 
know what it’s about?’ I said, ‘I 
don't really get it.’They said, 
we don’t either.' I said, ’You’re 
giving them $70 million dollars 
to do it! It's just like you 
guys.”’ 

For some, a comfortable fan¬ 
tasy is preferable to a horrific re- 
ality, and so it is with Panto¬ 
liano’s character. For him, Pan¬ 
toliano noted, "The Matrix is re¬ 
al. Trinity tells him, ‘The Matrix 
is not real. Cypher,' and I say, 
‘Oh, yes, it is. It's realer than 
this place |thc desolate Earth)." 

THE MATRIX had, by mod¬ 
ern standards, a very long shoot¬ 
ing schedule. Producer Barrie 
Osborne explained why this was 



done based on those,” explained 
Paterson. "There was a generic 
idea for a (computer interface) 
chair which we’ve tried to ad¬ 
here to quite closely, but for 
physical reasons, it's had to 
change to make it do what it ac- 
tually needs to do. It also 
changed, to some degree due to 
artistic proportion, fitting it into 
a real space as opposed to a 
drawing on a page. 

“But it’s adapting some 
things and totally starting some 
things from scratch. The same 
would apply to the power plant. 
Everything within the Matrix 
has been drawn or illustrated 
from scratch. Everything in the 
real world has been based on 
concepts that came from (com¬ 
ic hook artist| Geof Darrow and 
the brothers (Wachowski).” 

The Wachowski brothers had 
a definite design in mind for the 
film. As Paterson explained. 
“Their background had intro¬ 


necessary: “If you're doing a 
film with a lot of visual effects, 
it’s time consuming. The wire- 
work is also time consuming. 
Visual effects and the nature of 
the shots, the stylization of the 
movie, cuts down on the number 
of set-ups you can get done each 
day. If you’re doing a lot of high 
speed photography it requires a 
lot of lights and a lot of set-up 
time for that.” 

Hong Kong-style action 
takes time. For example, fight 
choreographer Yuen Wo Ping 
(see sidebar, page 26) worked 
with Jackie Chan for two 
months on a fight sequence in 
DRUNKEN MASTER 2 that 
lasts only 16 minutes on film. 
However, Osborne noted, “Wo 
Ping is actually quite quick, but 
there are lots of cuts, and we’re 
using the actors to do lots of 
their own stunt work. Because 
they’ve invested so much time, 
they really want to get it right. 
We could go 20 takes on a shot. 


which is a lot." 

To keep the studio pumped 
about the project, the Wa- 
chowskis had an eight-minute 
opening sequence sent back to 
Warner Bros., to give them a 
feel for the visual scale of the 
project. THE MATRIX utilizes 
a large scale canvas, encom¬ 
passing many large sets, “We 
sec a massive amount of de¬ 
struction almost being pushed to 
the point of being cartoon." said 
Osborne. The physical effects 
are being handled by Australians 
Steve Cortly and Brian Cox. 

To get more bang for their 
buck, the production turned to 
Owen Paterson to be the pro¬ 
ject's production designer. Pa¬ 
terson created the look of both 
the virtual reality and actual fu¬ 
ture, blending actual Sydney 
structures with sets and artifi¬ 
cial backdrops. 

"There were initial concepts 
that we took into consideration, 
a lot of other illustrations were 


Jo« Pantoliano, Reeves, Carrle-Artne Moss, and Lawrence 
Flshburne at the controls of the Nebuchadnezzar (design 
below), the antique warship used to attack THE MATRIX. 


duced them to a number of 
artists they'd worked with previ¬ 
ously. They particularly liked 
the work of Geof Darrow, who's 
a cartoonist they know very 
well. He did a lot of work for 
them originally, creating a me¬ 
chanical look for the real world. 

“Now bear in mind that the 
Matrix has taken on a look 
that’s based around reality. We 
like to think (hat the sets look 
like locations and the locations 
look like sets, in a way. We’ve 
based a lot of our designs on 
general or specific concepts that 
Darrow has worked out and 
then we’ve sort of developed 
them into physical shapes. 
We’ve tried to work everything 
in the real world, the machine 
world, from the mechanics of 
our world, from the early parts 
of the twentieth century and 
maybe a little later on. 


JOE PANTOLIANO, CYPHER 

“I read the script five times and I didn’t get it 
Executives from Warner Bros, called up, 
saying, ‘Do you know what it’s about?’ I said, 
‘Not really.’ They said, ‘We don’t either.’ 7 ’ 


19 








w“It’s not so much futuristic, 
but there’s sort of a pseudo- 
retro feeling about a lot of what 
we’ve used. We’ve used a lot of 
massive sand castings to build 
the basis of our ecto chairs, 
which is the mechanism that al¬ 
lows us to go from the real 
world into a computer. In addi¬ 
tion to that, within the machine 
world, things like automotive 
components, exhaust pipes, and 
carburetors have become very 
strong design motifs which 
we’ve tried to emulate in bigger 
scales/* 

For Paterson, THE MATRIX 
presented a number of design 
challenges. To give the sets the 
look of a location, a vast cyclo- 
rama was created that repro¬ 
duced the Sydney skyline, with 
extra buildings added to give 
perspective. Looking out office 
building windows on the set 
gives the impression of being 
several stories off the ground. 

To create the enormous 
cityscape cyclorama, a photog¬ 
rapher captured the Sydney sky- 
linc with nine 8x10 cameras 
shooting simultaneously from 
one camera platform. “It’s 
about 200 degrees of vision," 
said Paterson. “It’s approxi¬ 
mately 40 feet high and two 
hundred feet long. Once they've 
taken those photographs they 
digitize the whole thing. They 
then form the negative as one 
large digital file. An enlarger 
processes it onto one of Ko- 


Defendlng THE MATRIX, Australian 
Hugo Weaving as the relentless 
cyberassassin Agent Smith. 




THE WACHOWSKI BROS. 


The auteur directors of BOUND on 
filmmaking for the new millenium. 



Andy and Larry Wachowskl. scfeenwrtters- 

tumed-dlrectors to protect their vision, 
melding martial arts action with scMI scope. 


By Mitch Persons 

Interviewing film auteurs 
Andy and Larry Wachowski 
is something akin to acciden¬ 
tally running across Judge 
Joseph F. Crater. As any de¬ 
cent Urban Legend follower 
knows. Crater, a New York 
Supreme Court associate jus¬ 
tice, drove off in a taxicab in 
midtown Manhattan on the 
evening of August 6, 1930, 
and proceeded to disappear 
without a trace. Unlike 
Crater, though, the brothers 
Wachowski, the writer/direc¬ 
tors of the noir hit BOUND, 
are still very much in evi¬ 
dence in this world. They are 
notoriously shy of interviews, 
however, and have proved to 
be almost as difficult to track 
down as Crater himself. 

But the clout of Warner 
Bros., the company that is pro¬ 
ducing MATRIX, the Wa- 
chowski’s latest directing and 
writing effort, prevailed in ar¬ 
ranging an interview. The bas¬ 
soon-voiced Larry Wachowski. 
the spokesperson of the duo, 
and his quieter brother, Andy, 
seemed reluctant to give out 
too much information about 
their new film. The initial re¬ 
sponses were decidedly guard¬ 
ed. When Larry was asked if 
THE MATRIX was a change 
from BOUND, he answered 
with a curt ‘“Nope." When 
pressed for more information, 
both men opened up a bit, and 
soon the dialogue flowed fairly 
easily 

“THE MATRIX,” boomed 
Larry, “docs have its basic roots 
in BOUND. The new film has 
kind of a noir -y edge, although 
strictly speaking, it's not a noir 
film. It is noir in terms of its 
dark viewpoint, dark characters. 


Andy and I like nights. We like 
shadowy environments, shad¬ 
owy people, that sort of stuff. At 
the beginning of this film 
there’s no obvious good guy, no 
obviously bad guy, and that in itself 
is a very common noir-ly pc sce¬ 
nario. So I guess when somebody 
asks if THE MATRIX is different 
than BOUND, we’d have to say 
in essence, it isn't.” 

But THE MATRIX is a big- 
budget film, with gobs of spe¬ 
cial effects and a great deal of 
Hong Kong-type violence. By 
contrast, BOUND was an inti¬ 
mate suspense yarn revolving 
around three characters, the 
main action shifting back and 
forth between two adjoining 
apartments. “Because of the 
small-scale nature of the film,” 
noted Larry, “people assumed 
BOUND must have been our 
first effort. It wasn’t. It is true 
that BOUND was our first di¬ 
recting job, but before that we 


had written ASSASSINS, and 
had been writing THE MA¬ 
TRIX on and off for five 
years. In actuality, we had 
sold THE MATRIX to our 
producer, Joel Silver, long 
before BOUND ever saw any 
screen time.” 

“Nobody really understood 
THE MATRIX," added Andy. 
“We would turn the script in, 
and people would have no 
idea what is was about, and 
we would try to explain it, 
and all we would get would 
be a ‘Huh?’The only ones 
who seemed to be aware of 
what was going on were Joel 
and later on, Keanu Reeves." 

“The film,” interjected 
Larry, "was difficult to grasp 
for some because one of the 
more intellectual ideas is that 
it’s sort of a journey of con¬ 
sciousness. Early on we ref¬ 
erence Alice in Wonder land be¬ 
cause that was a great, brilliant 
story in terms of a child-like 
consciousness being confronted 
with a world in which a kid 
came into that world. All these 
rules were put onto this kid, and 
a lot of them she didn’t under¬ 
stand. Children are told to do 
things and there's no reason, at 
least from the child’s stand¬ 
point, to do them, and things 
don’t make a whole lot of sense. 
Eventually, the consciousness 
of the child evolves. We tried to 
do a similar thing where Neo's 
journey is an evolution of his 
consciousness towards a higher 
consciousness. 

"Our goal in THE MAI R1X 
was to make an intellectual ac¬ 
tion movie. We tried to push the 
action film a little bit further 
than it usually goes, just as in 
BOUND we tried to push the 
film noir genre a little bit be¬ 
yond what was expected. 






















In a seedier corner of THE MATRIX, freedom fighter Morpheus (Lawrence 
Flshbume) gets trapped by the relentless Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). 


“Even in styling the physical 
world of THE MATRIX, we 
tried to get it to go the extra 
yard. We knew the wilder ele¬ 
ments of sci-fi, the puttied crea¬ 
tures, the jetcars streaming 
across the screen in blazes of 
fiery exhaust. We took those el¬ 
ements, and then slammed them 
in the opposite direction. The 
entire effect of the film is one of 
hyper-reality." 

“We come out of the comic 
book world," said Andy, “and 
one of our inspirations was the 
work of a comic book artist 
named Geoff Darrow. Geoff did 
a piece called 'Hardboiled,’ 
which was gritty and naturalis¬ 
tic. We brought him on to do 
most of our conceptual work in 
terms of how we wanted the fu¬ 
ture world to look, and how we 
wanted our creatures to look..." 

“And also,” piped up Larry, 
“we were getting pretty bored 
with the way most technology 
works in science fiction and we 
wanted things to have this kind 
of nuts-and-bolts look where 
everything is made of metal, re¬ 
al heavy duty and functional¬ 
looking..." 

"And industrial," interjected 
Larry. 

“And industrial, rather than 
plastic-y and slick, and smooth 


and clean. That was the starting 
point for this future world. Then 
we were going to photograph it, 
and be very conscious of color, 
and kind of high contrast, mak¬ 
ing it very stylistic. 

“Everything in THE MA¬ 
TRIX has a stylized quality. For 
the fight scenes, we chose fight 
director Wo Ping, who had 
choreographed a film both 
Andy and I admired, FISTS OF 
LEGEND. We chose Wo over 
the many other fight directors 
who are out there because he is 
very good at creating stories in¬ 
side the actual fight. While 
some of the moves aren’t classi¬ 
cally flashy in some respects, 
the story beat, and the flow of 
the action is just the type of al¬ 
most balletic Hong Kong fight¬ 
ing we were looking for. 

"Wo was the choreographer, 
but we were the ones who were 
in complete and utter control at 
all times. Wo did the whole first 
pass with his team of stunt men. 
He positioned the camera where 
he thought it should be—Hong 
Kong choreographers always 
pick out the camera angles— 
and then Andy and I would look 
at them. Some of them we liked, 
some of them we didn’t like. I 
think one of the things that 
makes Hong Kong movies look 


LARRY WACHOWSKI, FILMMAKER 

“Hie whole concept of computer simulations 
seeping into the present consciousness is a 
millennium phenomenen—a natural thing 
for people to explore at this place in time . 77 


like Hong Kong movies is there 
is so much hand-held action 
that it loses a little bit, I think, 
of the elegance, the grace. 
Many times Wo’s shots just did- 
n’t meet our criteria, so we 
added moving camera shots, 
dollies, stuff like that around 
sections that we wanted." 

“It’s sort of funny," laughed 
Andy, “but in Hong Kong films 
you cannot get away from the 
medium profile angle. That's 
like the angle of choice, be¬ 
cause it's so real. It’s like right 
there, it’s really happening. We 
would be picking out a camera 
setup, and Wo would look over 
and go, ‘No, no, no! Wide an¬ 
gle, wide angle!’" 

“There were many times," 
continued Larry, “when we let 
Wo have his way; he is, after all, 
an undisputed'eXpert in his field. 
One thing that Andy and I were 
very hardcore about was having 
the actual actors do the fighting. 
We didn’t want a lot of double 
work. We believed that all of the 
energy in the fights would be 
strengthened by the fact that it 
would actually be Keanu 
Reeves and Laurence Fishburne 
duking it out with the bad guys. 

“Now, one of our stars—I 
won’t say who—had never had 
any kung-fu training. There was 
a certain curve that we had to 
deal with in terms of having to 
be able to teach this person. We 
were limited to a certain extent. 
Some of the moves the actor 
had to execute were very com¬ 
plicated. For the most part, 
though, when it looks like 
Keanu and Laurence, and our 
other stars, Hugo Weaving and 
Carric-Ann Moss, are engaged 
in physical collisions with the 
enemy, they actually are.” 

On-screen collisions may not 
be the only ones the principals 
of THE MATRIX have to face. 
On the same day that THE MA¬ 
TRIX opens on April 23, David 
Cronenberg is debuting his sim¬ 
ilarly-themed film, eXistenZ. 

“Yes, we know about that," 


declared Andy, “and to be per¬ 
fectly honest, I can’t wait to see 
it.” 

“Me too," agreed Larry. 
"We’re both big fans of his." 

“From what I’ve heard.” 
Andy continued, “David’s film 
and ours aren’t going to be that 
similar, they’re just going to 
have similar basic ideas. 
David’s style is very different 
than ours, and we have kung-fu 
in THE MATRIX whereas eX- 
istenZ doesn't." 

“Very true, Andy, but you 
know that ideas are universal. 1 
think the whole concept, that of 
computer simulations seeping 
into the present consciousness, 
is prevalent in a lot of work 
right now. I see it as kind of a 
millennium phenomenon —a 
natural thing for people to be 
exploring at this place in time. 
And it’s everywhere: it’s in 
THE TRUMAN SHOW, it’s in 
DARK CITY, it’s all over. THE 
MATRIX isn’t the first movie to 
address this subject, and 1 know 
it won’t be the last. It’s a very 
important modern topic.” 


Keanu Reeves as Neo, among the few 
who understood the cyber-reality of 
the Wachowskls’ complex script. 



21 
















dak’s digital films called Digi- 
film. It’s then all literally cel- 
lotaped together and flown out 
here and stretched together. 

"One of the great arts of do¬ 
ing a translight this size is the 
physical joining of all the pieces 
together. There are approxi¬ 
mately SO sections to it. Close 
up you can obviously see the 
joins, but once it’s rear illumi¬ 
nated—there’s lots of lights be¬ 
hind it on scaffolding, great big 
flat dish-like lights—they Ml 
create a general soft illumina¬ 
tion to it.” The rear illuminated 
translight can be specifically lit 
for a daytime or nighttime shot. 

The translighl was shipped 
in one piece because it was as¬ 
sembled in the States. "We can 
do translights here but nothing 
has ever been done that's as big 
as this one,” commented Pater¬ 
son. "They roll it up in a big 
cardboard tube. The whole 
thing goes into a box and is 
slipped into a jumbo jet and 
flown out here. It couldn’t get 
any higher because we were at 
the limits of what can fit in a 
jumbo jet.” 

A mock helicopter was built 
for the rescue scene which is 
lowered on wires and can move 
in and hover around. “It’s a 
mock-up like everything else in 
the film and we’ve had to actu¬ 
ally build this thing from 
scratch, which is a big job in it¬ 
self,” recalled Paterson. “We got 
parts from a real helicopter and 

Keanu Reeves and Lawrence 

Flahbume amid the devastation ol 
the reel world outside THE MATRIX. 




SUPERHEROINE 

Carrie-Anne Moss on ploying Trinity, 
a high-kicker with Peel potential. 



Moss as Trinity, watching over Reeves 
as he’s Injected back Into the cyberspace of 
THE MATRIX to save mankind from stagnation. 


By Dennis Fischer 

Nco: “Trinity? The Trin¬ 
ity? The Trinity that 
cracked the I.R.S. Kansas 
City DBase?. 

I thought you were a guy.” 

Trinity: “Most guys do." 

Once relegated to being 
endangered victims or the 
hero’s prize, women more 
and more are demonstrating 
in action movies that they 
can hold their own with 
their male counterparts. But 
the Emma Peels of this 
world are few and far be¬ 
tween. 

Carrie-Anne Moss, who 
stars as Trinity in THE 
MATRIX, has Peel poten¬ 
tial. An ability to kick butt 
did not come naturally to 
the Vancouver-bom actress, 
best known for her role on 
MODELS INC., as well as such 
features as SABOTAGE and 
THE SECRET LIFE OF AL¬ 
GERNON. Part of the commit¬ 
ment in taking the MATRIX 
role meant that Moss not only 
had the challenge of remaining 
slim enough to fit into her tight¬ 
ly form-fitting costume, but she 
also had to undergo several 
months of movie-style kung fu 
training under the direction of 
ace Hong Kong fight choreog¬ 
rapher Yuen Wo Ping. Her reac¬ 
tion? 

“It’s been so great!” said 
Moss with a weary, winning 
smile. “Hard and challenging 
and so worth all of the training 
in the end. I’ve been training for 
this movie for almost eight 
months. In the beginning it was 
really, really hard." 

Moss began preparing for 
the role by training every day 
from nine to four with an hour 


off for lunch. “We started off 
with stretching because the 
foundation for the kung fu is to 
be really, really open,” she said. 
“We’d stretch for a good hour 
and a half and then we started 
kicking and learning different 
styles of kicking. Then pro¬ 
gressing into different choreo¬ 
graphed fights. 

“1 would then spend the rest 
of the afternoon working on the 
wire because a lot of my kung 
fu is airborne. I started off 
learning how it felt on the wire 
and doing simple things, gradu¬ 
ally building up to some pretty 
intense wire stuff like you’ll see 
in the movie. I run sideways 
along the wall and do cart¬ 
wheels off the wall. Pretty out¬ 
rageous stuff.” 

If Moss has a shortcoming, 
she said, it’s that “I’m pretty 
brutal because I don’t have a 
great concept of holding back. 


For me to kick or punch 
with power I have to make 
contact. What’s so fascinat¬ 
ing about the Hong Kong 
films is their power—they 
don’t [actually! touch. The 
guys who are training us are 
the most incredible guys. 
Most of them don’t even 
speak English. They just 
show you and if you have a 
question you go to the inter¬ 
preter.” 

Still, the work remains 
rough, and Moss admitted 
that she has been sore from 
the beginning. “My hips 
hurt a lot. I sprained an an¬ 
kle during shooting, all 
things that I was still able to 
work with. I’m still paying 
for the ankle. 1 don’t think 
I’ll get over that until it’s 
all over.” 

Moss finds that her 
strength does not conflict 
with her feminine side. Regard¬ 
ing Trinity, she said, “I find her 
pretty interesting because as 
strong as I am. I’m still pretty 
feminine. And 1 like that.’ 

Moss has no trouble convey¬ 
ing both aspects of her charac¬ 
ter. “1 think it’s who I am,” 
Moss said. “I didn’t play being 
tough. I didn’t have to prove I 
was tough. She does what she 
has to do. She’s not cold. She’s 
not bitchy. She’s a woman 
who’s fighting for something 
she believes in and will do 
whatever she has to do to do it. 

“The key for me is the idea 
that I didn’t want to play it as 
being a really tough chick. I 
don’t need to be because it's 
there already. I'm running on 
walls and I’m kicking ass." 

Moss had no special inside 
track to win the part. “I don’t 
think they knew anything about 
me when 1 got the job," she 


22 



















Lean and mean: not tinea Diana Riggs Avenger Emma Paal haa an ability to 
kick butt baan so stylishly embodied. Moss had to train for savaral months. 


CARRIE-ANNE MOSS. TRINITY 


“I didn’t play being tough. I didn’t have to 
prove I was tough. She’s not bitchy. She’s 
a woman who’s fighting for something she 
believes in and will do whatever she has to do.” 


said. “I read for it three times 
and the screen test went for 
three days. The first day was 
with a group of kung fu guys. 
Not our guys, but others. It was 
a three-hour session and they 
taught me moves and it was just 
how quickly you can catch on. 
ft was really hard. It was in¬ 
tense. I read with Keanu the 
next day and it took a couple of 
weeks then to find out that I’d 
got it.” 

Moss found the strength of 
Trinity very appealing. “I loved 
the fact that she was so strong. 
And 1 was drawn to the broth¬ 
ers. 1 loved their style [she is a 
fan of their first directorial ef¬ 
fort, BOUND, which like THE 
M ATRIX, they also wrote] and 
I liked them immediately. Styl¬ 
istically they’re such fascinat¬ 


ing filmmakers. They tell a sto¬ 
ry beautifully and interestingly. 
I also liked Keanu and it looked 
great.’* 

Trinity is a very dedicated, 
driven individual who has had 
to put her concerns above con¬ 
siderations of love and ro¬ 
mance. As a character. Moss 
said. Trinity is “pretty consis¬ 
tent. The one thing that changes 
is she gets pretty honest about 
the feelings she has for this 
man. 

“I don’t want to give too 
much away, I’m not sure how 
much I can tell you. The place 
that 1 do change or grow from 
beginning to end is from this 
warrior mode that my charac¬ 
ter’s in, where there’s not a lot 
of time to love or to have feel¬ 
ings. Near the end I get to em¬ 


brace that a bit.” 

Another aspect that retains 
Moss’ feminine side is her cos¬ 
tume. “The woman who has 
designed our wardrobe is 
called Kym Barret,” Moss ex¬ 
plained, “and she’s become a 
very good friend of mine. She’s 
done ROMEO AND JULIET 
before this and she's just phe¬ 
nomenal. 

“I have two looks, because 
part of the movie takes place in 
the Matrix, and part of it takes 
place on [the Nebuchadnezzar], 
the ship that we live in. In the 
Matrix I wear sort of a very 
tight black PVC outfit. It’s 
made by our seamstress, who 
made it for dancers.” 

Moss does not have a fasci¬ 
nation for genre films. Howev¬ 
er, she says, “I’m always pleas¬ 
antly enterlained by films I go 
to of that genre. I love love sto¬ 
ries, but I'm always thrilled 
when I see a good science fic¬ 
tion movie. I'm just a huge 
movie buff.” 

Moss noted that being able 
to do the demanding stunts re¬ 
quired by THE MATRIX has 
been “one of my greatest ac¬ 
complishments. If I look at a 
script and find out it’s training, I 
don’t know whether I’d ever 
have to train again. This is 
about as intense as it gets. I’ve 
never heard of actors training 


for almost a year and keep train¬ 
ing for the whole movie.” 

Still, tiring as it is, Moss 
avoided resting between shots. 
“I try not to rest too much be¬ 
cause I get a lot of energy from 
people. I turn my music on and 
do dancing. I’ve taken a few 
naps but find it really hard to 
get back up so I try and keep the 
energy levels up.” 

The film's fight scenes 
might require as many as ten or 
15 different techniques, de¬ 
manding intense concentration, 
but Moss is a dedicated profes¬ 
sional who keeps on going until 
her performance is judged to be 
just right. So far, she is very 
happy with the results that she 
has seen. 

For Moss, working on the 
movie has been character-build¬ 
ing. “I’ve learned so much per¬ 
sonal stuff about myself,” she 
said. “I like the sense of humor 
of Hong Kong movies and the 
sense of humor of our wire 
team. I just love them.” 

Looking back on making 
MATRIX, Moss said, “It’ll be 
the greatest experience of my 
life. I can’t imagine that any 
other movie would compare to 
this experience. It’s not [just] 
the end result I’m thinking of, 
it’s the year I spent with all 
these great people. It’s been in¬ 
credible.” □ 


Mom m Trinity, dlMbllng a MATRIX aacurity guard with mm. Learning to do 
her own atunta made the film “the greatest experience of my Ufa," aha Mid. 



















we molded that and then built a 
substructure out of steel and 
then all the instrumentation, joy 
stick, and gears have been man¬ 
ufactured as well." 

Paterson decided that in the 
end, the most efficient and ef¬ 
fective way to shoot the movie 
was to try to film it as much for 
real as possible, using on-set 
practical effects. "We took a re¬ 
al building and we took a sec¬ 
tion out of it and built it for real 
right down to the steel so it 
looks like an old skyscraper,” 
he explained. "And then we’ll 
build our set, our component in¬ 
to it. We can float a wall [i.e. re¬ 
move it for filming purposes]. 
We can remove all the sides. We 
can float the ceiling pieces.” 

When the helicopter shoots 
out windows and walls, behind 
the walls—made to look con¬ 
crete—are panels which are in¬ 
serted with bullet hits in them 
that can be synchronized to the 
firing of a machine gun. 

Wild walls are nothing new 
to filmmaking, but filming them 
a couple stories in the air does 
add a new level of difficulty, so 
that the crew was often 20 feet 
in the air on a fairly large scaf¬ 
folding rig on which the grips 
and the gaffers and the directors 
were able to work. "Once the 
windows have been shot out, 
the room is about 35 to 40 foot 
deep. We add another 20 foot on 
scaffold to work on." 

To disrupt the virtual reality 


Reeves end Flshburne, plugged-ln to 
computer Interface chairs to Inject 
themselves Into THE MATRIX. 




BULLET TIME 

FX chief Yannak Sirrs on making time 
stand still , and other mindhlowers. 


By Dennis Fischer 

According to Yannak 
Sirrs, the digital effects su¬ 
pervisor for Mannix effects, 
the effects of THE MATRIX 
run the whole gamut, rang¬ 
ing from very intensive arti¬ 
ficial environments to more 
straight forward composit¬ 
ing work. "We’ve got bullet 
time, which is extended 
slow motion if you like, 
which has made it into some 
commercials now, but what 
you’ll see here is a very am¬ 
bitious version of it." 

Sirrs is a member of the 
Mannix effects team, whose 
most recent work was on the 
Coen Brothers’ film THE 
BIG UEBOWSKI, for 
which he did the memorable 
fantasy sequences of a Jeff 
Bridges-Busby Berkeley- 
Bowling fantasy. Sirrs has 
also worked on such recent 
films as ARMAGEDDON to 6 
DAYS 7 NIGHTS. 

Sirrs explained the film’s 
bullet time: “I’m doing moves 
that’ve never been seen before: 
slowing time down to a stand¬ 
still. Real world events go off 
like explosions, splashes and 
we freeze the action and move 
the camera out what would be 
an impossibly fast speed to an¬ 
other vantage point and contin¬ 
ue the action on from that 
point.” 

Bullet time, so-called be¬ 
cause the camera seems to trav¬ 
el as rapidly as a bullet as well 
as because it allows Keanu 
Reeves as Neo to move fast 
enough to evade a bullet, is cre¬ 
ated using multiple cameras 
which shoot a scene at carefully 
spaced intervals simultaneously. 
According to Sirrs, the effect is 
used about a half dozen times in 



Ksanu Reeves In a halt of bullets and debris 
In one of the film’s super slow-motlon 
affects sequences, dubbed “bullet time.” 


the film and is achieved with “a 
combination of many, many 
still cameras in a dedicated rig 
set-up, which involves about 
120 still cameras all electroni¬ 
cally controlled to fire in a par¬ 
ticular sequence. 

"By varying that sequence 
we can then decide how to slow 
time down, whether to freeze a 
moment in time or whether we 
want ultraslow motion, or 
whether we want to go from 
slow motion to a frozen mo¬ 
ment and then speed up again at 
the end of it. It all depends on 
how the cameras fire, if they all 
fire at the same time—it’s 
frozen. The further apart they 
fire, the faster the action will 
be.” 

The cameras employed are 
simple SLR (single lens reflex) 
cameras that are specially se¬ 
quenced and rigged. When the 


processed film is cut togeth¬ 
er, combining dozens of 
frames, it gives the move¬ 
ment a unique and unreal 
quality. 

Noted Sirrs, "There’s an 
underlying theme to the 
movie of an artificial envi¬ 
ronment. One of the premis¬ 
es of the movie hangs around 
the fact that one character 
has the ability to take control 
of his environment. So this is 
a hint that [he has] the ability 
to perceive the environment 
in a different way. He has the 
ability to slow things down 
and be able to move out of 
the way of bullets. It’s just 
another way of saying that 
this isn’t quite a real world. 
This is an artificial construct, 
which is what the movie’s 
based upon.” 

THE MATRIX will con¬ 
tain more than 200 special 
effects shots. Noted Sirrs, 
“Some are simple. Some are 
two level composites to ones 
with ten to 20 elements. There’s 
some full-on CGI stuff, very 
ambitious.” 

Sirrs himself started working 
in effects back in 1987, working 
for the Computer Company in 
London, which was one of the 
first companies involved in dig¬ 
ital film work. As Sirrs sees it, 
"The cutting edge is also a dan¬ 
gerous place to be. Since then 
all this equipment had made it¬ 
self available to other facilities. 
You can go and buy an SGI 
piece of software. I spent five 
years in London, moved to LA 
with the same company, and 
from there moved on to this 
project." 

Pulling off the bullet lime ef¬ 
fects has been particularly time 
consuming as well as technical¬ 
ly demanding. "You can link all 


24 
















these still cameras together and 
you can make them all fire,” 
said Sirrs, “but each camera is 
slightly different and we have to 
account for all these differ¬ 
ences. If you undo the quirks of 
each camera when you put the 
frames together, then you don’t 
sec individual camera signa¬ 
tures whether they be brighter 
or the image being a slightly 
different shape. There’s no [spe¬ 
cial] lens on these still cameras. 


Borrowing imagery from H. R. Glgor, 
babies are plugged Into THE MATRIX 
at birth. Left: Filming the pull-back on 
Reeves* cocoon, using green screen 

to expand the set off to Infinity. 

They’re created identically, 
but they’re being used for a 
purpose they’re not often 
used for,” 

The bullet time technique 
was created by a man named 
Dayton Taylor, who took a strip 
of film with lenses in front of it, 
and basically sequenced the ex¬ 
posures on the film. “Since then 
I think a number of people have 
come up with rigs,” said Sirrs. 
“This is certainly the most am¬ 
bitious one I've seen. I just 
think it’s going a little bit fur¬ 
ther. The rig is more flexible. If 
you see this effect used in other 
places, like commercials, what 
you generally sec is just a limit¬ 
ed move. The rig looks like a 
roller coaster of cameras, very 
impressive.” 

CGI provides the look of the 
film’s future, which Sirrs de¬ 
scribes as “a combination of 


YANNAK SIRRS, FX SUPERVISOR 

“You have to be careful about overdoing 
effects. Things like morphing have a certain 
lifespan before they get tired. Show it to an 
audience today and they tend to groan.” 


biomechanics with the biology 
being more acquatic than any¬ 
thing else. There are shades of 
[H. R.| Giger, but there's a more 
underwater look here. [We're] 
trying to get that nice translu¬ 
cent quality to objects. There’s a 
lot of time being spent on how 
to define the look.” 

One sequence Sirrs expects 
that audiences will find particu¬ 
larly spectacular is the harvest 
of the humans. As he explains it, 
we see “rows and rows of em¬ 
bryonic people growing off trees 
being harvested by the robots of 
the future. This is like a vista ef¬ 
fect. The whole landscape is 
populated by these things. Right 
from close to camera to off into 
infinity over the horizon you sec 
all this animation going on. It’s 
quite ambitious.” 

According to Sirrs, THE 
MATRIX has some of the most 
technically demanding effects 
he’s ever come across. “It’s just 
taking a major new spin on 
things," he said. “Every now 
and again you get the chance to 
work on a movie where [the ef¬ 
fects are in] your face. You 
can’t miss it this time.” 

Sirrs’ company writes much 
of their own CGI software. “A 
lot of the rendering qualities are 


custom-programmed to get the 
particular look they want. Addi¬ 
tionally, with the bullet time 
shots, there’s custom software 
in there to take out the inconsis¬ 
tencies between frames because 
we've made these stills cameras 
do something they’d not nor¬ 
mally be doing.” 

Sirrs' task is to bring Owen 
Paterson’s production designs to 
life. “We're definitely aiming for 
the 'wow' factor. You do have to 
be careful about overdoing 
things, though. You look at TER¬ 
MINATOR 2 and something like 
morphing, they have a certain 
lifespan during which you have 
to get the shots done in before 
they begin to look tired. After¬ 
wards they do become useful 
tools but suddenly not this new 
thing that's so special anymore. 
Morphing still has its uses today 
but as a stand alone showcase ef¬ 
fect, it hasn’t retained that pow¬ 
er. Show it to an audience today 
and they tend to groan. You 
don't really want to get to that 
stage with an effect. Get it out 
there at the optimum time and 
file it for future reference to get 
you out of a jam or for some par¬ 
ticular case. Not to keep show¬ 
casing it again and again and 
again.” □ 


Setting up the roller coaster formation of the fllm'a “bullet time" slow-motlon 
still cameras, filmed green screen to composite actors and effects In real time. 

















Ping looks the most forward to one day 
working with is Mel Gibson. 

When Ping choreographs a fight, he 
knows what the best camera angles will be. 
He works out the look of the fight during 
the time he is designing it. While Hong 
Kong excels in action movies, the former 
British possession has shied away from sci¬ 
ence fiction subjects because it lacks the 
technology and specialized knowledge 
available to American filmmakers. 

An accomplished action director him¬ 
self, Ping feels that the Wachowski brothers 
are “doing a very good job and that they’re 
very serious workers. Their thinking is very 
close to the Hong Kong directors' way of 
thinking. They have a feeling for the action 
films. They have action film sense. Ameri¬ 
can Hollywood movies take a longer time 
to do, which is better. They have more 
preparation time, whereas Hong Kong films 
are very fast-paced.” 

However, Ping actually prefers Hong 
Kong films because they’re more stressful. 
He’s used to the constant pace. To him, 
American filmmaking is a lot slower. “You 
could make four movies in the time it takes 
to make this one," he observed, “or, if not 
four, at least three.” 

As part of their working methods, the 
Wachowskis adapted their entire script in 
storyboard and worked together with Ping 
on the fight sequences. Ping felt comfort¬ 
able making suggestions for alterations that 


Wo Ping oversees his family-run crew during filming on the set In Sydney, 
Australia, hooking up wires to Reeves that are removed later, digitally. 


By Dennis Fischer 


Morpheus (Lawrence Flshburne) trains Neo (Keanu 
Reeves) In the mental discipline to tap Into THE 
MATRIX, aerial moves supervised by Wo Ping. 


he felt would improve the sequences’ pace 
and excitement. Unlike some Hong Kong 
films, each character is not given a distinc¬ 
tive fighting style. 

One thing Ping did insist on was that the 
lead actors not only train but keep in good 
shape. How many hours of exercise a day 
do the actors have to do to keep themselves 
in shape? “It depends on each movie,” said 
Ping. “Generally speaking and depending 
on how much action is required from the 
actor, then we decide how many hours 
training. On THE MATRIX, they average 
six hours a day, every day, except for Satur¬ 
days and Sundays. This involves fight train¬ 
ing and weight training too, though.” 

In describing the Washowskis’ working 
methods. Ping said, “The brothers are very 
much like Hong Kong directors and have 
Hong Kong sensibilities. I try to cooperate 
all the way but if I don’t think 
it works for the scene, then I 
just tell the directors and they 
work it out, but they all work 
together. 

“In American movies,” noted 
Ping, “they’re all story boarded 
and they leave little room for in¬ 
spiration on the set. It’s good 
that everything’s organized, but 
if I have any inspiration on the 
set, it’s only good if the actors 
can follow. Jet Li and Jackie 
Chan can follow, but not these 
actors." They don’t have the 
same background in kung-fu 
fighting as the Hong Kong box 
office champs. 


Yuen Wo Ping is a man at the top of his 
craft, that of a Hong Kong stunt choreograph¬ 
er and action director. He would only agree to 
work with the Wachowskis if they would 
guarantee that their cast would train long 
hours to learn kung fu and to learn to work 
with wires, rather than the rams and pneumat¬ 
ics Hollywood usually uses to project a per¬ 
son through the air at a certain speed. 

Wo Ping learned kung-fu from his illustri¬ 
ous father, Yuen Siu Tin, who introduced 
him to film work in the ’60s. He formed his 
own company in 1979, producing and chore¬ 
ographing Tsai Siu Ming’s BUDDHIST 
FIST the following year. He directed his pro¬ 
tege Donnie Yen in films such as TIGER 
CAGE and most notably IRON MONKEY. 
He also worked on the fight sequences of 
Tsui Hark s ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHI¬ 
NA and Wong Ching’s LAST HERO IN 
CHINA. However, it was his work as fight 
choreographer on FIST OF LEGEND that 
caught the attention of the Wachowski broth¬ 
ers. 

“The difference between making a Hong 
Kong action movie and a Hollywood action 
movie is that for the Hong Kong action 
movie, they are rehearsing on the set,” ex¬ 
plained Ping. “There is no prior training be¬ 
cause [Hong Kong stunt men] all know their 
actions. With Hollywood action films, the ac¬ 
tors have to be trained. 

“There’s not loo many chal¬ 
lenges with this movie, only the 
fact that [we] have to tTain the ac¬ 
tors. Every aspect of their fight¬ 
ing needed attention to make 
them look real, from their poses 
to the way they throw punches, 
so it took a little bit longer than 
usual.” 

Part of the actors’ training 
included getting familiar with 
Hong Kong-style wire work, 
which allows fighters to make 
incredible leaps and flips. Not¬ 
ed Wo Ping, “When they train, 
they do stretches, then fighting, 
and finish off on the wire." Of 
all Hollywood actors, the one 


MARTIAL ARTS 

Hong Kong fight master Yuen Wo 
Ping on exporting Kung Fu. 







































OWEN P ATE R SO N, DESIGNER 

“There’s always a little backstory to explain a 
particular thing [in the design]. It’s not that I 
just think something’s cool. The Wachowskis 
had a clear idea on what they wanted to do.” 



Setting up the mock helicopter and huge translate backdrop of Sydney to film 
Keanu Reeves’ climactic aerial attack (right) under controlled studio conditions. 


program being fed into Neo’s 
head, Morpheus gives him a 
blue pill which contains a trace 
program, allowing the rebels to 
pinpoint his actual, as opposed 
to virtual, location. For Nco, it is 
like going through the looking 
glass to discover that his body is 
floating in womb-red amnion. 

“Metal tubes, surreal ver¬ 
sions of hospital tubes, obscure 
his face. Other lines like IVs 
arc connected to limbs and cov¬ 
er his genitals,” reads the Wa¬ 
chowskis’screenplay. “He is 
struggling desperately now. Air 
bubbles into the Jell-O but docs 
not break the surface. Pressing 
up, the surface distends, 
stretching like a red rubber co¬ 
coon.” 

Outside of that cocoon, the 
dizzy, nauseous Nco finally 
finds out the truth, that he is a 
slave, like everyone else—born 
into bondage, kept inside a 
prison that he could not smell, 
taste or touch—until now. He is 
assaulted by the image of towers 
of glowing petals, each repre¬ 
senting a cocooned person, spi¬ 
raling up to an incomprehensi¬ 
ble height as well as disappear¬ 
ing into the dim murk like an 
underwater abyss. Insect-like 
machines are dispatched to re¬ 
cover the recalcitrant computer 
hacker. 

The people in THE MA¬ 
TRIX'S future have grown most 
of their lives within a power 
plant, and within that power 
plant, there are support mecha¬ 
nisms for them. Cerebral nee¬ 
dles arc implanted within their 
heads with a socket, and a num¬ 
ber of sockets are inserted down 
the center of their spines. For 
waste products, there’s a cod¬ 
piece with various bags and a 
catheter. There are IVs that fit 
into their arms. “The model de¬ 
partment has made about 40 dif¬ 
ferent little pieces that go onto 
the bodies which arc in the 
power plant,” said Paterson. 

The more human side of the 
real future world is represented 
by the rebels’ hovercraft, the 
Nebuchadnezzar, on IS chain 
blocks so the filmmakers could 
move the whole set up if neces¬ 
sary and move the walls out of 
the way. 

Said Paterson, “There’s a 
mechanical look to (the ship|, 
but also a slightly more organic 
feel to it. We’ve avoided the ob¬ 
vious outgoing organic struc¬ 


ture of a lot of the things that 
you’d obviously pick up be¬ 
cause the Nebuchadnezzar is 
what we like to think of as a 
bottom dwelling fish, in a lake, 
hanging around these super big 
drains that’ve come from a very 
affluent society in our own fu¬ 
ture. We’ve attempted to take 
some of those organic shapes of 
what a fish that lives at the bot¬ 
tom of a sewer might look like.” 

Most of the action on The 
Nebuchadnezzar takes place on 
the main deck. Said Paterson, 
"The ccto chairs are a cross be¬ 
tween barber’s chairs and den¬ 
tist chairs and 1920s technology. 
There’s about three hundred 
moving pieces to them if you 
count all the bits, which make 
them very complex. They're a 
bit like a para kilogram, so they 
can be raised up and the chair 
can be reclined and the back can 
be reclined, so you can go from 
a seated position to a reclining 
position for when you arc then 
transported into the Matrix. 

"What we’ve tried to do with 
the design is to go back to the 
basics. There’s a certain retro 


feel about this craft. There’ll be 
elements of machinery that 
you’ll think you've seen some¬ 
where else, like in your car or 
on an air conditioner. It’s that 
line—we’re taking foundry 
type objects, a fan cast base 
which is going to make the 
core, up to fine pieces of ma¬ 
chined metal, to electronic 
parts components. 

"The other thing we’ve tried to 
do is rather than hide everything, 
we’ve tried to expose the guts of 
the machine, all this cabling, out 
into the forefront. So rather than 
have ail that clean, streamlined 
spaceship, it’s more like the inter¬ 
nals of a very large submarine or 
the internals of a battleship. 

"Originally we considered 
this a military vessel, which over 
the years has been adapted. As 
things have broken because the 
human race is no longer in a po¬ 
sition where it can manufacture 
what it wants, a lot of those 
pieces have been replaced by jer- 
ried-in cabling or wire. Things 
arc held together by fencing wire 
and plastic bands almost." 

While the action scenes arc 


intended to emulate the look of 
Hong Kong action films, in 
MATRIX the fights cause literal 
damage to two digital environ¬ 
ments. Noted Paterson, “When 
someone hits a wall they don’t 
just go hard against the wall, 
they actually penetrate the wall. 
Larry and Andy arc trying to 
cross that boundary of what is 
total reality with concrete walls 
that don’t break to the Matrix, 
which is, as we say, part of a 
computer code. And if you are a 
part of that and you are aware 
of it, then you can break some 
of those rules so something will 
break if you go against it and 
not necessarily be smashed to 
pieces as you or I would be.” 

The virtual reality, “normal 



business" world has been given 
a cold, modern, steel and glass, 
antiseptic look. Said Paterson, 
“Within our matrix city we have 
towers of glass and steel. With 
this government building we 
have a color scheme that’s fairly 
green and within it it’s not a ter¬ 
ribly nice place because the 
agents just hang out here and 
commit nasty business. I guess 
we’re trying to give the feeling 
that it's not a great place to be. 
And as Larry and Andy would 
suggest, as you move out of 
downtown sections of the ma¬ 
trix, you move into areas of de¬ 
terioration.” 

Paterson noted that a lot of 
thought has been given to the 
design work. “There’s always 
got to be a little backstory to ex¬ 
plain a particular thing,” he 
said. "It’s not that I just think 
something looks cool.” 

“Larry and Andy had so 
much of a clear idea on what 
they wanted to do,” said Os¬ 
borne. “It’s actually great to 
work with them because they 
are innovative. They’ve got a 
new take on things.” 


27 























Captain Kirk finds life beyond the final 
frontier, including a satire of Trek fandom. 



Shatner plays himself In FREE ENTERPRISE, offering advice to 30-somethlng 
science fiction fen Refer Weigel, who feels the urge to ' get a life. 


By Anna L, Kaplan 

When asked to describe his 
latest movie, FREE ENTER¬ 
PRISE, William Shatner en¬ 
thused, “It’s monumental! It’s 
one of the great works of all 
times, like THE TEN COM¬ 
MANDMENTS, 2001,those 
kind of films. This is monumen¬ 
tal in the same way. It’s ground 
breaking, it’s earth-shattering, 
and it’s innovative. How’s 
that?” 

He said all this without so 
much as a chuckle. FREE EN¬ 
TERPRISE is, in fact, a roman¬ 
tic comedy that was previously 
titled TREKKERS about, yes, 
two STAR TREK and sci-fi fans 
who meet the legendary Shatner 
and hope he will help them with 
their personal problems. 

“Maybe it’s a little smaller 
than what I’m describing,” Shat¬ 
ner acknowledged with a laugh. 
“It’s a fun film, made by a cou¬ 
ple of young independent film¬ 
makers. Just getting a Film made 
these days is kudo enough. 
These young guys have done it. 
They asked me to be a part of it. 
Essentially that was it." 

The two film makers are 
Mark Altman, the former editor 
of Sci-Fi Universe and frequent 
contributor to Cinefantastique, 
and his friend Robert Meyer 
Burnett. The two co-wrote the 
script, which Altman produced, 
and Burnett directed and edited. 
Absolutely essential to the 
movie was Shatner. How did 
they get him to agree to play the 
role, without which there would 
have been no story? Explained 
the actor, “To begin with, I did¬ 


n’t [agree]. They had written a 
script which involved me being 
a guru. I couldn’t do that. I kept 
saying no. Finally, they had 
shed enough tears, I thought. I 
suggested that we rewrite it and 
make him in need of as much 
help as they needed. That’s 
what happened. We rewrote my 
part of the script and tried to 
make him, this character of 
Shatner, more needy. It was en¬ 
tertaining. I wanted to indicate 
that nobody has it made, and 
everyone has the same needs. 
People put their pants on the 
same way. The world is all the 
same." 

Shatner continued, “In fact, 
both guys had this feeling 
about this character, the actor 
Shatner. When they were kids 
they used to think, ‘What 
would Shatner do?' They put it 
in the script. Obviously it was 
because I was playing Captain 


Kirk. They assumed, as chil¬ 
dren, that the actor and the 
character were one, little 
knowing that the efforts of the 
writer were somewhere in be¬ 
tween.” 

Although most of FREE EN¬ 
TERPRISE’S references to 
Shatner’s past involve STAR 
TREK, mention is also made of 
T. J. HOOKER. Shatner starred 
as T. J. Hooker from 1982 to 
1986. Joining him on the show 
were James Darren and Heather 
Locklear. During the film, the 
character of Shatner speaks 
about Locklear. Shatner himself 
retains warm feelings about 
James Darren, saying, “I love 
Jimmy Darren. He’s a wonder¬ 
ful guy.” 

Shatner did not know that 
Darren now plays a recurring 
character on STAR TREK: 
DEEP SPACE NINE, Vic 
Fontaine, a holographic 1960s 


Las Vegas singer. When told 
about this, Shatner laughed, 
“No kidding? How wonderful. 
I'll have to take a look at that. 
He’s in his element, Jimmy is 
very funny.” 

Darren, in turn, said about 
working with Shatner on T.J, 
HOOKER. “I had a really good 
time with him, actually. I see 
Bill once in awhile, and it’s fun. 
It’s always nice to see him. I 
would work with him again, 
gladly. I’d love to." 

While Shatner is without a 
doubt best known to genre fans 
as Captain James Tiberius Kirk, 
he has had a long, successful ca¬ 
reer as an actor on stage, televi¬ 
sion, and film. He guest-starred 
on an amazing number of televi¬ 
sion dramas, especially during 
the '60s and ’70s, everything 
from PLAYHOUSE 90, DR. 
KILDARE and THE DEFEND¬ 
ERS, to THE MAN FROM UN¬ 
CLE, and MISSION IMPOSSI¬ 
BLE. His genre credits include 
THE OUTER LIMITS episode 
entitled “Cold Hands, Warm 
Heart,” and two highly-regarded 
TWILIGHT ZONE episodes, 
“Nick of Time" and “Nightmare 
at 20,000 Feet.” Besides starring 
in the original STAR TREK se¬ 
ries and T. J. HOOKER, Shatner 
narrated RESCUE 911 for six 
seasons. His first directing jobs 
were multiple episodes of T. J. 
HOOKER. He went on to direct, 
among other things, SIAR 
TREK V as well as TEK WAR, 
the television scries based on his 
Tek War novels, in which he also 
played Walter Bascom. He ap¬ 
peared as Captain Kirk in all the 
STAR TREK features through 


28 


































































The king of all media, Shatner In FREE ENTERPRISE, leaving Kirk behind 
to embark on a career as writer, commercial pitchman and TV producer. 


HWe rewrote my part of the 
script,” said Shatner. “We tried to 
make this character of Shatner 
more needy. I wanted to indicate 
that nobody has it made.” 


GENERATIONS. He provided 
the voice of Kirk for the animat¬ 
ed STAR TREK series, and 
more recently, did the same for 
multiple computer games such 
as “Starfleet Academy.” 

Shatner’s comedic talents 
were often visible, for example 
when he guested on THE 
FRESH PRINCE OF BEL- 
AIR, or during the famous 
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE 
routine when he told a group of 
fans to “Get a life." Shatner 
writes fiction and nonfiction, 
and is a businessman with an 
active Internet presence. He is 
also promoting a pre-paid 
phone calling card program 
with AT&T featuring STAR 
TREK cards. “I have other 
books, and scripts, and pro¬ 
jects, and companies,” said 
Shatner. “I’m very busy.” Not 
surprisingly, Robert Burnett in¬ 
troduced Shatner to the audi¬ 
ence at the U.S. premiere of 
FREE ENTERPRISE as “The 
king of all media.” 

He took the time to talk 
about some of his projects. 
One is a television miniseries 


based on his Man O' War sci¬ 
ence fiction books, whose pro¬ 
tagonist Benton Hawkes often 
reminds readers of both Cap¬ 
tain Kirk and Shatner. “A four 
part miniseries is waiting for 
the head of Showtime to 
greenlight, which I would di¬ 
rect and star in, based on one 
of my books, Man O' War. I’ve 
got a four hour, wonderful 
script, and even some sketches 
of what the visuals will be 
like, so I’m waiting with great 
anticipation.” 

Shatner continued, “I’ve got 
a book coming out called Get A 
Life. I did a lot of research into 
what the conventions are, who 
goes to the conventions and 
why, and what the audience 
sees in STAR TREK. I found 
the people that I came in con¬ 
tact with fascinating.” 

Docs he enjoy doing STAR 
TREK convention appear¬ 
ances? “Very much,” said Shat¬ 
ner. “They are performing. It’s a 
stand-up comedy routine, for an 
hour, hour-and-a-half. You 
evolve a routine, and that’s 
what you do.” 


The actor docs admit to 
missing Captain Kirk, at least 
a little bit. He has been contin¬ 
uing the adventures of Kirk in 
a scries of STAR TREK novels 
for Pocket Books, along with 
Judith and Garfield Reeves- 
Stevens. The first was The 
Ashes of Eden. Then The Re¬ 
turn brought Kirk back to life 
after the events of the film 
GENERATIONS. Kirk contin¬ 
ues saving the universe in the 
national best-selling books 
Avenger and Spectre, soon to 
be followed by Dark Victory. 
Shatner said, “I'm writing. I'm 
telling some stories that are 
good. I've been telling my ver¬ 
sion of what I think STAR 
TREK is, and what I think 
Captain Kirk is. It’s been very 
educating to me.” 

He continued, speaking 
about STAR TREK: GENERA¬ 
TIONS: “It was strange to be on 
the set where I felt I was the 
guest on a STAR TREK film. I 
felt like I was a guest. Every¬ 
body adjusts, and so STAR 
TREK has gone on without me. 
It seems rather strange, but it 
has gone on without me, and 
without the whole cast. That’s 
the way it is.” 

Shatner also admits that the 
occasional fan confuses him 


with Kirk. He laughed, “My 
wife doesn't, but some people 
do. I make them salute.” 

He talked about a high 
point for him in the making of 
FREE ENTERPRISE. His 
character, Shatner, is trying to 
make a musical version of 
William Shakespeare's 
JULIUS CAESAR, in which 
he plays all the parts except 
Calpurnia. He says he would 
like Calpurnia to be played by 
Sharon Stone, or in a T. J. 
HOOKER reference. Heather 
Locklear. Shatner explained, “I 
had this crazy idea that if Shat¬ 
ner was trying to sell a movie, 
it would be like a musical of 
JULIUS CAESAR. In order to 
show the audience that Shatner 
wasn't totally mad, he had to 
sing a number and make it 
work. I rap with Rated R. I 
went into a studio late at night 
with a group of guys that are 
rap artists. They are artists but 
they look very funky. At first 
glance, you wouldn't think that 
they are musical artists. 1 grew 
to love them. They were the 
greatest young men, and won¬ 
derful poets really, or Rated R 
is. He polished his lyrics, he 
was into the rhythm. He want¬ 
ed to know what the theme of 
(the speech] ’Friends, Romans 


Shatner and rappers Rated R perform “No Tears For Caesar,” a comic highlight 
of FREE ENTERPRISE, as Shatner mounts a Shakespeare musical. 









and countrymen...’ was. He 
came up with some wonderful 
stuff. I rapped the soliloquy, 
and sang some of the back¬ 
ground. He rapped alongside 
me. We were in the studio for 
two nights putting together a 
number, along with the mixers 
and the producer, who finally 
put it all together. It was an 
enormous experience. Of all 
the things that could have hap¬ 
pened. that was the most elec¬ 
trifying for me.” 

The Julius Caesar rap num¬ 
ber ends FREE ENTERPRISE. 
At the time of this interview, 
Shatner had not yet seen the 
completed film or rap perfor¬ 
mance. He laughed. “1 don t 
know how it’s going to turn out. 
Everybody says they like it. The 
people who have talked to me 
have said they liked it, but Eve 
been very apprehensive about 
it. It’s a walk on the wild side, 
that’s for sure. It’s totally outra¬ 
geous, and great fun if it comes 
off. If it doesn’t come off, you 
are such a fool.” 

William Shatner spoke to the 
audience before the late night 
premiere of FREE ENTER¬ 
PRISE. Everyone thoroughly 
enjoyed his entire performance, 
including the rap lyrics, “No 
tears for Caesar,” Mark Altman 
said that the general public at¬ 
tending the next showing had an 
even belter time. Shatner need¬ 
n't have worried. 


Filming Shatner as the Imagined 
voice of wisdom to generations of 
Trekkers In FREE ENTERPRISE. 




Trek fans Robert Meyer Burnett and 
Mark A. Altman strike close to home. 


By Dan 

Scapperotti _ 

The world of science 
fiction fandom gets a re¬ 
ality check when a pair 
of Trekies arc faced with 
the looming arrival of 
their 30th birthdays. Hey, 
what are we doing with 
our lives? Filmmakers 
have failed to touch on 
the subject perhaps be¬ 
cause the plot seems so 
limited. What more can 
you say about a bunch of 
geeks running around in 
home made Star Trek 
uniforms. Well, plenty, 
according to Mark Alt¬ 
man, co-writer and producer of 
FREE ENTERPRISE. After all 
it takes one to know one. Alt¬ 
man has the credentials. A CFO 
contributor and former editor of 
Sci-Fi Universe, Altman was 
called “the Socrates of Sci-Fi" 
by the Sci-Fi Channel. 

Altman was working with 
his collaborator, Robert Burnett, 
on a script for a Jewish super¬ 
natural horror film called DAY 
OF ATONEMENT when they 
were confronted with a severe 
case of writer’s block. Sudden¬ 
ly, a casual remark sent them in 
another direction, “As a lark 
one day I said to Rob, ‘You 
know we should do something 
about our screwed up crazy 
lives,’” said Altman. “‘You 
know, going shopping for laser 
disks and being science fiction 
fans and all of the dysfunctional 
activity that comes with it.”’ 

Recalling Woody Allen’s 
PLAY IT AGAIN SAM, Altman 
said “Maybe our Humphrey 
Bogart would be William Shat¬ 
ner who would come and give 



Director Robert Meyer Burnett sets up a shot with 
cinematographer Charles 1— Barbee (I). Burnett co¬ 
wrote the film with fellow Trek fan Mark A. Altman. 


us advice. We thought that 
would be fun to work on so I 
started writing it. The pair fin¬ 
ished the script and took several 
pages to the producer they were 
working for on DAY OF 
ATONEMENT who agreed to 
shelve the original project and 
concentrate on the new film. 

The script focused on two 
guys, coincidentally named 
Mark and Robert, played by Er¬ 
ic McCormack and Rafer 
Weigel, who decide they’ve got 
to get their lives on track. Origi¬ 
nally, the script called for an 
imaginary William Shatner 
character to pop up now and 
again to give advice to the two 
fans, but Shatner himself sug¬ 
gested a different approach. Ac¬ 
cording to Altman, when they 
contacted the actor about doing 
the film he said "Listen I don’t 
have any of the answers. I'm a 
screwed up guy. I’m more 
screwed up than these guys. 
Why don't you show a charac¬ 
ter like that, then I would be 
more interested in playing it.” 


Okay! Back to the 
drawing boards. “He’s 
still the manifestation of 
their Id at the begin¬ 
ning,” Altman explained, 
“but later on in the 
movie they actually meet 
Shatner. Their meeting 
him actually gives illu¬ 
mination into their own 
lives. In the film. Shatner 
is just a really screwed 
up guy. He’s a drunk. He 
can’t get anywhere with 
women. He’s the antithe¬ 
sis of Kirk and it works 
great. Based on that 
rewrite be came aboard. 
It was the right direction 
for the character. The 
right direction for the movie. 
He’s like Peter O’Toole in MY 
FAVORITE YEAR. He had a 
great sense of where the story 
should go. He’s fantastic in it, 
hysterical. 

“It’s for people who love sci¬ 
ence fiction by people who love 
science fiction. It’s a love story 
about the genre as well as a love 
story between two people. Al¬ 
though this is more of a roman¬ 
tic comedy, I like to think this 
has more of a Woody Allen in¬ 
fluence to it then anything else. 
The real joy, I think, was work¬ 
ing with someone like Bill Shat¬ 
ner. In the past a lot of people 
have said things like he’s ego¬ 
tistical, he’s hard to work with, 
but we found none of those 
things. There were days when 
we would work exceptionally 
long hours and he was always 
happy to be there. He would al¬ 
ways be there for the other 
guy’s close up and was always 
having fun, kicking back, smok¬ 
ing a cigar, laughing with the 
crew. Just a delight. 


30 





















































I 



Eric McCormack as a Trek fan turning 30, who Imagines himself hunted down 
In a LOGAN’S RUN-inspired dream sequence and turns to Shatner for advice. 


66 1 said to Rob ‘We should do 
something about our screwed- 
up, crazy lives. You know...being 
sci-fi fans and all the dysfunction¬ 
al activity that comes with it.’ ” 


"It's funny because we had 
been a little affected by hearing 
people badmouthing him. Even 
though this guy was sort of an 
idol to us and someone we had a 
great deal of respect for, we 
were worried that working with 
him would sort of sour our illu¬ 
sions about him. But it didn't. If 
anything they reaffirmed why 
we had so much respect for 
him. If anything we have more 
respect for him now as a profes¬ 
sional and as an actor. You see 
him on talk shows and he's over 
the top and he acts like a buf¬ 
foon. In this movie he under¬ 
plays and he’s understated." 

While the film is a romantic 
comedy it addresses some seri¬ 
ous elements especially in rela¬ 
tionships between sci-fi fans and 
the opposite sex. “Even though 
there's a lot of funny stuff 
going on in the movie and a 
lot of straight comedy, there 
are serious issues and 
metaphors," said Allman. 
“One of the things we were 
concerned about was that 
people would think this is the 
wacky Bill Shatner movie 
and it's anything but that. He 
may be amusing to a certain 
extent, but at the heart of this 
movie is the relationship be¬ 
tween the character of Robert 
and this girl Claire whose 
played by Andie England. 

She shares many of the 
things that he docs in movies 


and comics and science fiction, 
but she also expects him to be 
responsible and not spend the 
rent money on buying a new 
Star Trek collectible.” 

Claire and Robert, who 
works as an editor at Full 
Eclipse Studios, a low budget B 
movie company, meet, appro¬ 
priately enough, in a Golden 
Apple comic book store where 
Claire manages to snare the last 
copy of a comic Robert wants. 
Their acerbic conversation over 
the comic book in the middle of 
the store prompts him to pursue 
her on a date. 

In the film. Mark, interest¬ 
ingly enough, is the editor of 
Geek magazine. “It’s sort of a 
thinly veiled version of a maga¬ 
zine that I used to run called 
Sci~Fi Universe” he said. “Ba¬ 


sically it’s a science fiction film 
and television magazine that the 
character works for. It's basical¬ 
ly an amalgamation of a lot of 
the magazines that you sec out 
there, including Cinefantas - 
tique. Mark is the other protag¬ 
onist in the movie. He’s a guy 
who’s dreading turning 30. He’s 
having lots of LOGAN’S RUN 
nightmares over the fact that 
he’s turning 30 and feels his life 
is over because he hasn't ac¬ 
complished what he set out to 
do. He’s dating these hot ac¬ 
tresses and models, but can’t re¬ 
ally get involved in a meaning¬ 
ful relationship.” 

Besides getting writing credit 

on FREE ENTERPRISE, Alt¬ 
man is also one of the produc¬ 
ers, a job that kept him hopping, 
trying to cover everything from 
overseeing the casting to dealing 
with what the crew would have 
for lunch. “When you’re at this 
level and you're not a Joel Sil¬ 
ver with an $80 million budget, 
you pretty much have to be in¬ 
volved in every aspect of the 
production," Altman said. “You 
have to be responsible for every¬ 
thing from the small, most mun¬ 
dane aspects, to the big issues, 
including marketing and public¬ 
ity and distribution issues as 
well. 1 had to deal wdth such a 
problem as not having the spe¬ 
cial effects guy around when 
we’re shooting the bubble bath.” 


A bubble bath? Altman was 
also a little confused. “Why do 
we need a special effects guy for 
a bubble bath? We're not blow¬ 
ing it up,” he said. “According 
to SAG rules we need a hypo-al¬ 
lergenic bubble bath for the ac¬ 
tress in the scene. And it became 
a whole issue because the spe¬ 
cial effects people have to be 
there to put in the bubble bath. 
Of course I had to deal with situ¬ 
ations like that. As producer 1 
oversaw the post production 
process including the sound mix 
and dealing with the talent, and 
clearances for things that we 
show in the movie.” 

One of Altman's major chal¬ 
lenges on the film was securing 
rights to props positioned 
through the movie. “Because 
we’re using so many toys, get¬ 
ting the rights to use all that was 
very daunting,” he said, “but ul¬ 
timately we were able to get 
everybody to sign off. Because 
this movie was so steeped in 
pop culture this movie was a 
very difficult movie to do on 
this scale but ultimately making 
it look like a big movie and de¬ 
livering on the promises of the 
script was a challenge. I certain¬ 
ly think (hat we did that.” 

Rather than a shoestring, di¬ 
rect to video film quickly 
thrown together, FREE EN¬ 
TERPRISE is an independent 
film in the realm of SWING¬ 
ERS scheduled to be released 
theatrically this year by a ma¬ 
jor studio. “It’s a big deal,” 
said Altman. “It doesn’t nec¬ 
essarily cost a lot, but the vi¬ 
sion is much bigger. We had 
over 60 speaking parts, all 
SAG actors. We had nearly 
40 different locations that we 
shot on, including restau¬ 
rants, comic book stores, fu¬ 
turistic cities, apartments. 
Toys *R* Us. We were all over 
town shooting in a variety of 
locations. It was a major un¬ 
dertaking. It’s a traditional 
romantic comedy in the guise 
of a hip indy comedy. " □ 


Rater Weigel plays the Sandman trying to off McCormack in the LOGAN'S RUN dream 
sequence, which used costumes and props trom the 1976 movie and later TV series. 



31 














WARRIOR PRINCESS 




Producer and series creator Rob Tapert 
on his Sword & Sorcery action amazon. 


By Dan Scapperotti 

She is a television phenom¬ 
enon. A character who began as 
a murderous villain but found 
redemption. A female Lone 
Ranger, who, along with her 
trusty companion, wanders the 
land dispensing justice. She’s 
XENA, WARRIOR PRIN¬ 
CESS, perhaps the most popu¬ 
lar spin-off program to come 
out of the ranks of syndicated 
television. To close out the first 
season of HERCULES: THE 
LEGENDARY JOURNEYS, a 
new character was created for a 
three-episode arc that includes 
‘•The Warrior Princess," “The 
Gauntlet” and “Unchanged 
Heart." Even before the 
episodes aired there were plans 
for a spin-off series to replace 
VANISHING SON, a failed se¬ 
ries in Universal Studios Ac¬ 
tion Pak package. Since the 
success rate for action adven¬ 
ture heroines was low, spinning 
off a series based on a woman 
who could kick some serious 
butt wasn’t initially greeted 
with a standing ovation. 

Renaissance Pictures, the 
production company behind 
both XENA and HERCULES, 
was originally established by 
Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell 
and Robert Tapert to produce 
THE EVIL DEAD in 1981. 
Since then the company has 
produced two sequels to the 
horror cult classic, as well as 
DARKMAN, a three-picture 
series. 



New Zealand star Lucy Lawless as the Warrior Princess in third season s serio¬ 
comic episode ‘Warrior... Priestess...Tramp," as Xena takes the place of her 
conjuring look-alike and nearly gets burned at the stake tor her troubles. 


Lucy Lawless, an unknown 
New Zealand actress who had 
appeared in a couple of HER¬ 
CULES episodes, was cast as 
Xena. The character was intro¬ 
duced as a female warlord who 
sets out to kill Hercules, the on¬ 
ly man who stands in the way of 
her conquering Arcadia. She se¬ 
duces lolaus, Hercules' side- 
kick, in an effort to weaken the 
Greek hero. Her plans ultimate¬ 
ly fail and Xena herself is im¬ 
periled when, during an attack 
on a helpless tow n, she saves 
the life of a baby. The gesture is 
seen as a weakness. Xena's 
army turns on her and she is 
forced to walk a brutal gauntlet. 
A strong body and firm w ill en¬ 
ables Xena to survive the on¬ 
slaught and she wanders off 
alone into the wilderness. 

Later, allied with Hercules, 
Xena kills her treacherous lieu¬ 
tenant, Darphus, but Ares, the 
God of War, restores Darphus to 
life and sends him on a killing 
rampage. Hercules and Xena 
become lovers as they battle the 
undead creature, finally de¬ 
stroying Darphus and thwarting 
Ares’ plans. 

‘it was very much a struggle 
at first to get that on the air," ad- 
mitted producer Rob Tapert. 
“There were very few tradition¬ 
al women as hero shows and 
they had not done particularly 
well. I wanted to try a tough 
woman character, so we intro¬ 
duced her on HERCULES. 
Once the studio, who had been 
bugging us for another show, 


32 




























Lawless faces the Biblical Goliath (Todd Rippon) in second season s "The Giant Killers," an exquisitely composed forced perspective shot by Flat Earth Effects. 


I 


saw her, they instantly suggest¬ 
ed that we do a spin-off. There 
was some resistance hut ulti¬ 
mately some guys from the Tri¬ 
bune Group thought it was a 
good idea and they fell in line.*' 
Tapert, who had produced 
the EVIL DEAD and DARK- 
MAN films, had always wanted 
to do a female superhero show 
hut couldn't get a hook original 
enough to launch the project. A 
fan of Hong Kong action 
films, Tapert was inspired 
bv movies like THE BRIDE 
WITH WHITE HAIR and 
SWORDSMAN I, II, and 
III, “I thought there were el¬ 
ements in those that I could 
use in crafting the woman 
villain," said Tapert. “We 
then worked on XEN A and 1 
realized the lake would he to 
do a woman who is evil and 
turns good and make her the 
superhero. 1 never had that 
before and it allowed Xcna 
to go forward. It all fell into 
place, at least in my mind 
and the writing staff's mind. 
'This was a tale of redemp¬ 
tion told from the point of 


view of a w oman who's a mass 
murderer. It gave us a hig back- 
drop and a lot of character traits 
to play with in terms of writing. 
At least at the time it was dif¬ 
ferent from anything on televi¬ 
sion." In traditional fashion, the 
murderous but repentant Xena 
was to have been killed off at 
the end of the trilogy. The deci¬ 
sion to give the character her 
own scries prompted a quick 


rewrite. 

In September, 1995. “Sins of 
the Past,*' the show's first 
episode aired on syndicated sta¬ 
tions across the country. Much 
like Batman's Robin and Her¬ 
cules' lolaus, Xena needed 
someone to talk to as she trav¬ 
eled the lands of the ancient 
world. Along comes Gabriclle, 
a character who was to propel 
the Warrior Princess into per¬ 


sonal realms that would have 
stunned television writers a 
decade ago. The role went to 
Texan Renee O'Connor, who 
had appeared in “The Switch,” 
the eighth episode of HBO's 
TALES FROM THE CRYPT, 
directed by Arnold Schwar¬ 
zenegger, and DARKMAN II: 
RETURN OF DURANT, the 
second of the trilogy co-pro- 
duced by Tapert with his long¬ 
time partner Sam Raimi. 

Gabriclle is a spunky, non¬ 
violent type, the antithesis of 
the act-first-ask-qucstions- 
later Xena. At first a Xena 
groupie, Gabriclle takes up 
her staff as a non-lethal 
weapon of defense. Soon the 
spirited young woman is as 
expert with her weapon of 
choice as Xena is with her 
chakram. Soon Xena and 
Gabrielle had their hands full 
battling gods, monsters, evil 
priests, out of control war¬ 
lords and a host of other 
denizens of ancient Greece. 

The writers aren't adverse 
to having Xena intrude on 
other myths and legends. She 


Lawless subdues Hudson Lelck as "Callisto," a popular first season character 
out for revenge, kllted-off In the cllffhanger that ended the third season. 



33 




















«Xena is the good 
guy we hope is inside 
ourselves,” said Rob 
Tapert “We’ve all done 
bad things and we all 
need atonement. Xena 
is the hero we hope 
we can be.” 


Lucv Lawless as Xena In the clutches of Hope. Gabrielles child by demon god Dahot In the currently airing tounn 
season^show “A Family Adair." XENA Is produced by Tapert's Renaissance Pictures for Universal Television synd.catio 


nets involved in the Trojan War 
in “Beware of the Greek Bear¬ 
ing Gifts ” She was there when 
ihe Israelites and Philistines 
were at each other's throats and 
young David went up against 
Goliath in “Giant Killer.” They 
even gave their own spin to 
Charles Dickens’ holiday clas¬ 
sic in “A Solstice Carol.” Along 
the way, Xena runs into several 
historic figures including Julius 
Caesar, Cleopatra and Hip¬ 
pocrates. 

Even Xena’s adventures 
aren't confined to her native 
land. Xena's travels have tak¬ 
en her to Britain, Rome, Chi¬ 
na and other parts of the an¬ 
cient world. There was even 
an excursion into the 1^40's 
when Lawless and O'Connor 
played characters who find 
“The Xena Scrolls,” an an¬ 
cient history of the Warrior 
Princess’ adventures. "It's the 
number one-rated show in 
that universe,” pronounced 
Tapert. “You're always sur¬ 
prised when something 
works and you're always 
shocked when it doesn't. I 
was surprised by the success 
and I’m always surprised at 
what people like and don’t 
like about it.” 

When the scries first aired 
there were significant differ¬ 
ences between HERCULES 
and XENA. Surprisingly, XE¬ 
NA was more violent and the 
sexual encounters more bla¬ 
tant, a situation that was toned- 


down when it became known that 
young girls were part of the view¬ 
ing audience. But as the seasons 
passed, and XENA began edging 
out HERCULES in some mar¬ 
kets, things changed. 

“The differences between 
HERCULES and XENA have 
blurred in this season coming 
up,” said Tapert, “because we 
demystified Hercules a little bit 
by making him not so much the 
ever so right good guy. The real 
differences are Here was a good 
guy and Xena was a bad guy. 
Here is the story of somebody 


we hope is out there protecting 
us from monsters and saving us 
from the bad guys and Xena is 
the good guy wc hope is inside 
ourselves. Meaning, we’ve all 
done bad things and we all need 
some amount of atonement. So 
Xena is the hero we hope we can 
be and Here's the hero who’s out 
there beating up the bad guys. 

“In the past I would say that 
Xena had more violence. 
There's different styles of fight¬ 
ing between the two. Xena 
tends to be more acrobatic and 
Here more powerful. Xena has 


Lawless displays her flair for comedy in second season s • Warrior...Princess... Tramp, 
a „riot hu series co-creator R. J. Stewart introduces Xena to two loopy look-alikes. 


probably more weapons in it. 
Xena kills more and gets away 
killing more then Here does.' 

The tone of XENA extends 
from slapstick comedy to the 
depths of tragedy. The writers 
walk a very thin line in pacing 
the stories and the producer is¬ 
n’t always sure that they've 
found the right beats. Noted la- 
pert, “There is a part of me that 
says you're much better off do¬ 
ing a comedy every single 
week, and. there’s another part 
of me that likes to tell dramatic 
stories that are different from 
anything that is on TV, like this 
season’s two-part opener,” said 
Tapert. “Even on HERCULES 
they were really dark stories. 
We try to balance it by doing a 
couple of dark ones, then a 
as couple of lighter shows and 
some straightforward stan¬ 
dard Xena adventures like 
where the bad warlord has to 
be put down. I do like to keep 
that mix. This season was go¬ 
ing to be a little darker and I 
keep winding it back to a lit¬ 
tle lighter. 

“It's interesting—the stu¬ 
dio did a bunch of research 
over ihe summer contacting 
the actual people who watch 
the show and it turned out 
that people enjoyed the come¬ 
dies more than the dark dra¬ 
ma. Not by much. It was like 
55 to 45%. 1 feel we can get 
away with different tones as 
long as they're not boring.” 

In “The Hitter Suite,” a 
XENA musical, Gabrielle's 
hidden the fact that her baby, 
Hope, is alive aiul a danger to 
Xena's own son. Solan. 
“That was Rob Tapert’s vi- 

















LUCY LAWLESS 

The New Zealand beauty on the rigors and 
rewards of starring as TV's fantasy action heroine. 



Lawless goes over the script with series creator, producer (and husband) Rob Taped, 
who married his star In March 1998, at the end of last year's third season. 


By Dan 
Scapperotti 

Perhaps the most surpris¬ 
ing aspect of the popular XE- 
NA: WARRIOR PRINCESS 
franchise has been the versa¬ 
tility of its lead, Lucy Law¬ 
less. No other actress on tele¬ 
vision today is called upon to 
display such a wide range of 
emotions. From week to 
week the Xena writers place 
on Lawless’ bare shoulders 
the fate of the show. Whether 
battling demons sent by the 
gods to plague her or dealing 
with the loss of her child. 
Xena is center stage. Only a 
few years ago Lawless was a 
gold miner. “I worked for a 
gold mining company in 
Australia," she explained in 
her delightful Kiwi accent, 
usually disguised on the show. 
“I was out in the outback dig¬ 
ging away. There weren’t 
nuggets lying around on the 
earth. They measure gold in dirt 
in parts per million and billion. 
There was no gold to be seen 
but it was very interesting to the 
qualified geologist." 

Xena first appeared in “The 
Warrior Princess" episode of 
HERCULES. Lawless now 
seems so identified with the role 
that it seems amazing that she 
wasn't the producers’ first 
choice when the character was 
given her own spin-off series. “I 
was sort of the local backup girl 
if everybody else fell through," 
said Lawless. “Which they did. 
God bless their little hearts.” 

Lawless had previously ap¬ 
peared in two HERCULES 
shows, first as an Amazon lieu¬ 
tenant in “Hercules and the 
Amazon Women” and then as 


the wife of a mythical centaur in 
“As Darkness Falls." While the 
producers were impressed with 
the actress’s abilities, distribu¬ 
tion factors seemed to demand 
an American in the role. When 
the first casting choices became 
unavailable and with production 
start fast approaching they de¬ 
cided to cast the New Zealand 
native. 

“I think a lot of people don’t 
turn on our show because they 
think that it’s silly karate fanta¬ 
sy," said Lawless. “But they’re 
missing out on a great show. 
I’m so blessed to have this role 
which offers me unlimited chal¬ 
lenge in all directions. I've nev¬ 
er been bored in the role. As 
hard as it’s been or as pleasur¬ 
able, it’s never been easy. The 
comedies are a little more re¬ 
warding than the dramas for me 
because they take less out of me 
and they give me a lot of yucks. 


I do enjoy them a little more 
these days, i do know to appre¬ 
ciate this role. There is not an 
actress alive much less dead 
who has had such a wide role in 
any television series ever." 

The show was designed as a 
dark-edged, action-driven 
hour of television. Although 
comedy had been sprinkled 
among some episodes, as Law¬ 
less’ versatility became appar¬ 
ent, the writers began tapping 
into her.comedic abilities more 
and more. One of the wackiest 
episodes of the show was “War¬ 
rior... Princess...Tramp.” R.J. 
Stewart penned the farce which 
has Xena meeting two look- 
alikes; Diana, the naive princess 
and the bawdy, dimwitted Meg. 
A triple role like that would nor¬ 
mally call for all the scenes with 
each character shot at the same 
time-giving the actress time to 
get into character and sustain it 


until all those scenes were 
shot. “You haven’t got time 
to be shooting like that,” 
laughed Lawless. “That’s a 
luxury we can’t afford on our 
schedule. That’s why there 
aren’t that many physical 
differences between them 
because I would have to go 
in one shot from playing 
Meg to playing Diana to 
playing Xena all in the same 
half an hour. It took a bit of 
mental gymnastics but I 
loved that. I can’t tell you 
how pleasurable that is. 

“1 had to method it out a lit¬ 
tle beforehand. Okay, I’m 
playing me dressed as the 
princess who is pretending to 
be Xena. It’s pretty complex. 
But it’s real fun. I’m the sort 
of actress who can’t over- 
prepare. It just steals all my 
spontaneity. So 1 set my mind on 
this character pretending to be 
this character dressed as this 
character. I’m playing Meg and 
at this stage of the episode I only 
know so much of the plot where 
another character would be fur¬ 
ther ahead in their understand¬ 
ing of the world. I map these 
things out loosely before hand 
and then I just go and be it. For 
me that’s the most pleasurable 
and best way to work and seems 
to get the most laughs.” 

The gimmick was so suc¬ 
cessful that it was recycled the 
following season as “War¬ 
rior... Priestess...Tramp.” The 
episode reunites Xena with 
Meg, now a bartender in a local 
brothel. The third spoke in this 
comcdic wheel is Leah, a Hest- 
ian vestal virgin. Lawless plays 
the character using her own 
voice but with a distinctive lisp. 

In “The Furies” a scheming 


35 





















Ares has the Furies drive Xena 
mad as punishment for not 
avenging her father s death. 
Scriptcr R. J. Stewart actually 
mentioned the Three Stooges in 
the stage direction on his script 
and Lawless is a delight as the 
wacked out Warrior Princess. 

‘i d never seen the Stooges un¬ 
til the night before,” she said, i 
kind of knew how they acted 
because I’d seen Bruce Camp¬ 
bell and kids acting like them 
before. I'd seen a little bit but 
never a whole picture. I saw 
one the night before and I sort 
of went with it. But I’m just ba¬ 
sically an extremely silly per¬ 
son anyway. When it works, it 
works. I think we’re going to 
see a lot more comedy coming 

_ ti 

up. 

All is not just fun and games 
on the set, especially when 
you’re the focus of attention. 
For the fourth season two-part 
opener, the grind finally got to 
Lawless. Xena is in a desolate 
region. The shows were filmed 
three hours south of Auckland 
on the desert road away from 
the usual production locations. 
“Those two episodes were ex¬ 
tremely dark." Lawless admit¬ 
ted, “and it nearly killed me. 
They were exhausting, physi¬ 
cally. It was freezing and that 
was just the beginning of a 
whole block of episodes, very 
Lucy-heavy episodes. I was re¬ 
ally pushed to my limits. Ab¬ 
solutely to the limit. I really had 
to change my way of looking at 
the world after those episodes 
because otherwise I was just go¬ 
ing to become the sort of star 
that I never want to be. Just 
somebody who thinks that no¬ 
body understands their pain. 
Just a brat, an adult brat. I so 
disrespect that in people in my 
profession. Actors who won't 
come out of their trailers be¬ 
cause they think that they're 
bigger than anybody else. 

“1 think I just hit the fourth 
season slump. Usually it hap¬ 
pens in the third season and pro¬ 
ducers know this. Stars usually 
go through a time in their third 
season where they just have a 
complete conniption and be¬ 
come a pain in the ass to work 
with. 1 sort of sailed through my 
third season but in the fourth 1 
just felt this terrible slump. I 
managed to sort of hide it to a 
large degree but there wasn't 
any of that joie de vie that I usu¬ 


Lawless as Xena. fighting Kevin Smith 
draw her back to her dark warlord past 

ally have. 1 really went on a 
downer. I’ve come through it 
and I’m so much better and hap¬ 
pier and appreciate all the great 
things I have in my life. But for 
a period there I couldn't. I just 
went through a desolate time. I 
have the man of my dreams, a 
great job, a happy healthy 
daughter and a wonderful 
home. But I couldn’t appreciate 
it.” 

Lawless is confronted week¬ 
ly with the most physical chal¬ 
lenges of any woman on televi¬ 
sion. Riding, running, leaping 
into the air and, of course, bat¬ 
tling Roman legions, vicious 
bandits, and armies of religious 
fanatics. “1 do all the fighting,” 
said the actress. “I have a stunt 
double because we don't have 
time to shoot everybody else’s 
angles. They'll shoot everything 
that’s facing me, they’ll shoot 
all my angles and then they II 
fight again on another day with 


as Ares, the God of War. who tries to 
in an ongoing love/hate relationship. 

second unit team and my won¬ 
derful stunt woman, Zoe.” 

Did Lawless get any kind of 
training? “Arc you kidding?” 
she asked with a big grin. “I 
didn’t have training. 1 just went 
to work the first two years and 
got smacked around until I 
learned how to do it. You learn 
pretty quickly that way. Train¬ 
ing? There’s no molly coddling. 
The way we shoot this it’s al¬ 
most guerrilla shooting. It’s not 
like shooting in America. We 
are the wild, wild west and 
things are generally done for re¬ 
al so what you see is what you 
get. 1 do have a riding double. 
Anything that’s too dangerous 
or that’s going to give me a 
black eye like working with 
new actors who have never 
fought before is done with a 
stunt woman. You can get an¬ 
other stunt woman, but I m a 
little harder to replace." 

But there was a time when 


Lawless had to be replaced. 
There was no stunt woman 
around when the actress was in 
Los Angeles for an appearance 
on the Leno Show. Lawless was 
supposed to ride a horse on to 
the show but didn't make it. “I 
was riding a horse on concrete, 
she said. “It was a western 
horse and I need an English 
horse. It’s a completely differ¬ 
ent set of skills and a complete¬ 
ly different set of communica¬ 
tion with the horse. Anyway, 
they got me a western horse and 
I don’t know how to ride west¬ 
ern and this horse was just 
pissed off. We did it a couple ol 
times. It was fine and then they 
said. ‘Okay, one more for safe¬ 
ty.’ 1 came trotting in, the 
horse’s feel went swish out on 
the pavement. I’ll never forget 
the sound of hoofs scrapping on 
cement, and the horse fell. I was 
thrown clear and I smashed my 
pelvis.” While their star was 
laid up, the production cleverly 
reworked a couple of scripts 
and suddenly Xena was in C al- 
listo’s body, courtesy of Ares, 
the God of War and Hudson Leick 
became Xena for a couple ot 
episodes. 

With an intense shooting 
schedule there are times when 
Lawless needs a break and the 
focus of an episode falls on Re¬ 
nee O’Connor’s character, 
Gabriclle. “We shoot from late 
October until March and then 
we have a bit of a break and 
then we’ll shoot until October 
again,” she said. “Thirty-two 
weeks of filming, but it s bro¬ 
ken up with little breaks be¬ 
cause there’s so much burn-out 
from all sorts of departments. 
The Gabrielie shows are de¬ 
signed to give me a break or 
when it’s convention time or I 
have to go and do a big thing for 
the industry somewhere." 

For a change of pace, writers 
Adam Armus and Nora Kay 
Foster set “The Xena Scrolls" in 
the 1940's. An archeologist and 
her assistant come across the 
scrolls which tell of the adven¬ 
tures of the Warrior Princess 
and her friend. Gabrielie. Fhe 
show gave Lawless and Renee 
O’Connor a chance to play dual 
roles. “I loved that,” Lawless 
said. “I loved putting on mod¬ 
ern clothes. I got to use a South¬ 
ern accent. It was a funny story. 
I loved getting out of the armor. 
It was my dream. I loosely plan 


36 












Lawless cradles Renee O'Connor as Gabrlelle. her faithful companion, grieving over the death of a comrade In fourth 
season’s "A Good Day.” Lawless has proven herself an accomplished dramatic actress during the course of the series. 


what I want to do, that’s my act¬ 
ing style. I’ve experimented 
with different ways of working 
but this really works best for 
me. the way my brain operates, 
[just go in there and love it and 
laugh. Anything that makes the 
crew laugh is generally a hit so 
that’s what we gauge it on.” 

The two Greek heroes were 
also featured in an animated 
film called appropriately 
enough. HERCULES AND 
XENA: THE ANIMATED 
MOVIE. Kevin Sorbo and Law¬ 
less provided the voices for 
their animated counterparts. Is 
Lawless now a candidate for 
Disney? “I’m ready, baby. I’m 
ready,” she said gleefully. “It 
was quite difficult at the time. 1 
think I was a bit intimidated by 
the process and I found it diffi¬ 
cult to be Xena (a) out of cos¬ 
tume and (b) just the sound of 
my ow n voice kind of scared 
me, I think. I found that surpris¬ 
ingly difficult just standing 
around in the booth. The next 
time I do one I’ll understand 
how that works a little better so 
1 can imagine things more fully 
than I could at the time.” 

One of Xena’s trademarks is 
her warrior scream as she leaps 
high over the heads of sword- 
wielding ruffians and soldiers. 
“Rob [Tapertj wanted, for lack 
of a better word, a gimmick,” 
Lawless explained. "He wanted 
something like Tar/an’s yodel. 
We were watching CNN and 


there were those Arabic women 
who make that sound and he 
said, ‘That’s kind of what I 
want.’ But I couldn’t do it the 
way they did so I just bas¬ 
tardized it and made up my 
own and it seems to have stuck. 
You don’t want to hear that in 
an enclosed space.” 

Upcoming episode plots arc 
generally a mystery to Lawless 
who isn’t part of the script 
process and she wants to keep it 
that way. “They don’t tell me,” 
she said. “It’s a big surprise to 
me and a big surprise to them 
what they get back. That is how 
we work. I don’t like to hear 
about a script, to tell the truth, 
because it just makes me anx¬ 
ious. Things are either far better 
or far worse then I anticipate so 
there is no point in me anticipat¬ 
ing anything. I’m much better if 
1 just hear about things three or 
four days before. That’s a good 
time frame for me. We’ve 
learned not to discuss that stuff. 
It’s on a need to know basis. 
Lucy doesn't have to know.” 

Over the last few years. 
Lawless has gone from gold 
mining in the wilderness to in¬ 
ternational stardom. A process 
that has radically changed her 
life. From being a free spirit the 
actress has found she must 
come down to earth and face the 
fame, ‘it has changed my life, I 
guess, in every way,” she said. 
“My daughter is the one con¬ 
stant in my life and now my 


husband. 1 own one pair of 
socks from my old life, apart 
from the people. Everything has 
changed. I still sec my old 
friends but so rarely. I've had to 
go into microcosms and to ac¬ 
cept also my work as my social 
life because 1 spend so much 
time there. I always look to be 
happy, so when things arc a lit¬ 
tle bit of a struggle I learn to 
deal with it. I used to just sail 
through life. Now I don't sail. 
It’s very rewarding but it’s hard 
work. I’ve hud to become mueh 
more responsible. I can't just 
take a day off work because 
there are people who depend on 
me to pay their mortgages. I’ve 
had to become more responsible 
in every sort of way.” 

Just keeping up with the de¬ 
mands of the role is a major 
challenge for the 31-year-old 
actress who must face the cam¬ 
eras for 32 weeks a year. 
“That’s why 1 don’t need to get 
too far ahead,” said Lawless. 
“I'm always fighting to keep on 
top of it health-wise, work- 
wise. I’ve got to have done my 
homework. I’ve got to be physi¬ 
cally on top of it. And I’ve got 
to be happy. I’m the morale of¬ 
ficer. I’m in so much of (he 
show- that everybody is looking 
at me all the lime and if I be¬ 
have badly it effects everybody, 
so I’m very cognizant of the 
fact of my responsibilities to¬ 
ward everybody and helping 
them have a good day. 



“You’re surprised 


when something works 
and you’re always 
shocked when it 
doesn’t,” said Taped. 
“I’m always surprised at 
what people like and 
don’t like about it.” 


sion from day one,” advised 
head writer K. J. Stewart about 
the musical extravaganza. “Rob 
and I cooked up this 
Gabrielle—Hope theme, 
Gabrielle’s baby and the reper¬ 
cussions. When we got to the 
end of that in the planning stage 
we have Xena and Gabrielle in 
this situation where Gabrielle 
was responsible for.the death of 
Xena’s son. Not intentionally, 
but because she hid the truth 
about Hope. We realized we 
needed a resolution to that. 
Some major episode that would 
resolve that rift. We all put our 
thinking caps on about how to 
do that and Rob came back and 
said, ‘I want to do a musical!’ 

“He just drove the writing 


Xena suffers In fourth season’s 
“Shark Island Prison,’’ one of the dark 
shows that balance the comedy. 





37 













WARRIOR PRINCESS 




WRITING SWORD & SORCERY 

Co-executive producer R. J. Stewart on running the 
writing staff that creates the show s mythology. 



By Dan Scapperotti 

The responsibilities of keep* 
ing XENA alive and well, 
meaning drawing back audi¬ 
ences week after week, falls to 
R.J. Stewart and his team of 
writers who must continually 
put the Warrior Princess in in¬ 
teresting, action-filled situa¬ 
tions. Stewart, a veteran of 
shows like THE GREA'I DE¬ 
FENDER and REMINGTON 
STEELE also penned the fea¬ 
ture film MAJOR LEAGUE II 
and did a rewrite that helped 
save WATERWORLD. The gig 
on XENA was originally pro¬ 
posed by his agent who sent the 
writer unfinished cuts of the 
HERCULES episodes that fea¬ 
tured the new character. “I saw 
Lucy [Lawless] and that’s what 
drew me in," said Stewart. “I 
never saw a woman sell action 
the way she did. I smelled suc¬ 
cess there. What also attracted 
me was the fact that it had the 
HERCULES lead in." 

Producer Rob Tapert met 
with the writer and agreed that 
Stewart’s credits on the new 
show would be “developed by" 
and co-executive producer. 
Since then the writer has been 
promoted to full executive pro¬ 
ducer. But primarily Stewart is 
the head writer. He wrote or co¬ 
wrote over 20 shows and has 
rewritten several scripts from 
freelance writers. "All the 
scripts go through me before 
they go out," he advised. “ That 
doesn’t mean I write all the 
scripts. I have to okay them. I 
supervise the writing staff and 1 
keep in close communication 
with the pre-production, the 
post-production and, of course, 
the actual filming of the thing. 


Gabrielle (Hence O'Connor) meets her daughter Hope, her child with demon 
Debauch, in fourth season's "A Family Affair," creating a rift with Xena. 


Eric Grunderman is the guy in 
New Zealand. I keep in close 
contact with him. Of course, I 
try to keep in close contact with 
Rob Tapert at all times because 
he's the one who owns the com¬ 
pany and is the main guy." 

For Stewart, the action-ad¬ 
venture-fantasy format offers a 
lot of freedom to a writer. A 
freedom that is advocated by 
Tapert. “Rob encourages us to 
explore different things," said 
Stewart, “and we found audi¬ 
ences liked both the dramas and 
the comedies and as a writer it's 
hard to resist trying both of 
those out. I don’t think many 
writers get the opportunity to 
write such turgid melodrama 
one week and some outlandish 
comedy the next. I really enjoy 
it. It’s something wc found that 
we could do in this genre. 

When Stewart or one of the 
other scriptwriters on the show 
comes up with an idea for an 
episode, they pitch it to Tapert. 


Once the producer approves the 
suggestion it is sent for devel¬ 
opment. “Because of my posi¬ 
tion 1 can go directly to story.’ 
said Stewart. “With anyone else 
we have a meeting before we go 
to story." 

Once the story is developed 
a meeting is held to discuss the 
beat sheet for the episode, 
“Everyone would give me notes 
and discuss it and then 1 would 
go off and write the script. 
Steve Sears and Chris Man- 
heim, who are on staff here, 
would go through the same 
process. Sometimes we like to 
meet on the idea even before we 
go to treatment to discuss it to 
make sure that somebody does¬ 
n’t go off in a totally wrong di¬ 
rection. Although I don’t 
rewrite Steve or Chris, l do give 
them lots of notes. Steve or I 
rewrite most of the freelancers. 
Actually Chris rewrote one of 
the freelancers this year. 

“As far as a freelancer goes. 


we generally give them the 
idea. We work and develop the 
idea with them and then when 
we get to the point where we 
think the story is right we send 
them off to do the script. Some 
of them hit pretty close so there 
isn’t a lot of rewriting to do. 
Others miss by a mile and we 
have to do a pretty big rewrite. 
That’s really not much of a re¬ 
flection on the writer, whether 
they're good or not. It’s whether 
they're a good marriage to the 
show. 

“There are some terrific 
writers who just can't necessari¬ 
ly write in the genre. Some peo¬ 
ple don’t get the sensibility for 
the show and we have to rewrite 
them. The other thing is that 
people who even get the show 
aren’t part of the day to day 
meetings and don't know the di¬ 
rection we’re going so wc have 
to do corrections on things just 
because they don't know where 
we went since the last time we 
had a meeting." 

A XENA season consists of 
22 shows, 22 mini-movies that 
have to be ground out in a ten- 
month period. To maintain that 
pace there has to be more to 
drive the creators then just a 
job. “When Rob and I get to¬ 
gether we talk about Xena,’* 
said Stewart. “Not because it’s 
work, but because it’s what wc 
like to talk about. When you 
love what you do, you generate 
ideas. When we came up with 
the idea of a rift between Xena 
and Gabrielle [“Maternal In¬ 
stincts’’], we were sitting in the 
office just laughing and talking 
about what would be cool to 
happen on XENA. It doesn t 
feel like a lot of pressure. Don't 
get me wrong, there are times 


38 












Hudson Leick as first season's "Callisto,” with O'Connor and Lucy Lawless. When Lawless was Injured during a stunt 
on the Jay Leno Show, quick thinking by the writers had Callisto switch bodies with Xena for a few weeks recuperation. 


when we're sitting staring at a 
blank board wishing an idea 
would appear on it. But by and 
large because we like the show 
so much, when Rob and 1 talk, 
we generate a tot of ideas. I 
think that's a key to it. We have 
a passion for the show.” 

When something unforeseen 
occurs, writers are left scram¬ 
bling around to fill in the gaps. 
When Lucy Lawless fell off her 
horse and smashed her pelvis 
while rehearsing for the Leno 
show, the production schedule 
left no room for even a tempo¬ 
rary shutdown. Stewart and 
crew went to work. “By neces¬ 
sity we did some outlandish 
things when she felt off the 
horse," he said. “We left her in 
somebody else's body and had 
Hudson Lcick play her. Then 
we kept her dead for a week. 


Those were two interesting 
shows.” 

Steve Scars had written an 
episode called “Intimate 
Stranger” where Aries switches 
Xena and Callisto 's bodies. At 
the end of the episode, they 
were supposed to switch back 
but a hasty rewrite changed that. 
“We reopened that episode,” 
said Stewart, “and had Xena 
stay in Callisto ’s body. There¬ 
fore we could go directly into 
an existing script without even 
stopping production. That was 
amazing. That whole period 
was sort of surreal. We'd be 
sitting there watching dailies 
with Hudson Lcick playing Xe¬ 
na. It happened so quickly be¬ 
cause we were about to go into 
production when Lucy fell off 
the horse. One second I’m 
working on an episode for Lucy 


Centaur Chyron and Young iolus in YOUNG HERCULES, Flat Earth effects for 
XENA's kid show companion. Stewart would like to write a Centaur epic. 



Lawless and two weeks later 
I’m seeing it with Hudson Lcick 
playing it. That was a time 
when I was shocked at how well 
everything turned out because it 
was so weird.” 

Whether feature films or 
television production, the 
budget restraints always leave 
the creative forces behind the 
projects wanting. “The China 
episodes were very expensive 
and the musical was verrnry ex¬ 
pensive,” Stewart stressed. “If 
wc had triple the budget I would 
do a major epic centaur show 
with just an army of centaurs 
and chariots. We’d have this 
huge mythical battle. 1 love cen¬ 
taurs, but when wc do them 
we’re so limited. Wc have about 
three composites a show. After 
that it's those actors walking 
around with the kind of funny 
girdles that look like horses. If 
we had an unlimited budget I’d 
do the ultimate centaur battle. 

“We did a show in the first 
season called ‘Hooves and Har¬ 
lots’ which had some nice stuff. 
The centaur stuff in FANTASIA 
is terrific, hut that's animated. I 
think somebody, someday, with 
a huge budget, will do a mag¬ 
nificent live-action centaur 
piece, and I hope it’s me. The 
centaurs arc such interesting 
creatures. The reason you don’t 
see them more often is that they 
are extremely expensive to do. 
It just ups the budget ridiculous¬ 
ly.” □ 



“We try to balance 
the show by doing 
a couple of dark ones, 
then lighter ones and 
some straightforward 
adventures,” noted 
Tapert. “I do like to 
keep that mix. 7 ’ 


staff crazy w ith that story and 
kind of tortured them with it for 
quite a while hut 1 think it 
turned out terrific. We thought 
he was quite mad. Absolutely. 
That doesn't mean that he isn't 
quite mad, just quite mad in a 
very good way.” 

On a show that can take 
chances wilh something from as 
far afield as “The Bitter Suite,” 
a musical encounter, there are 
limes when Tapert isn’t happy 
with the results. In fact, the pro¬ 
ducer finds faults with many of 
the episodes. “Sometimes you 
try things that don’t exactly 
work," he said. “Every one of 
them doesn’t work for me for 
one reason or another.” 

L'nttlinued nn pugr 43 


Co-executive producer, series co- 
creator and writing staff supervisor 
R. J. Stewart at Renaissance Pictures. 
























SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS 

Flat Earth Productions supplies the CGI solutions 
to realize the show’s monsters and fantasy imagery. 



Flat Earth co-founders Kevin O’Neill, Kevin Kutchaver and Doug Beswick, 
running a full service effects house that spring from the needs of XENA. 


By Dan Scapperotti 

Neptune* the Sea God rises 
from the depths, lightning flash¬ 
es around him, as Xena, stands 
on a bluff overlooking the ocean 
ready to do battle against the wa¬ 
tery deity. A giant bird preys on 
Prometheus and carries the War¬ 
rior Prince off to its nest. A giant 
confronts the Warrior Princess. 
These and other effects are the 
creation of Flat Earth Produc¬ 
tions, an effects house spawned 
by the HERCULES and XENA 
television shows. Heading the 
company is the triumvirate of 
Kevin (TNcill. Kevin Kutchaver 
and Doug Beswick who have be¬ 
come experts in the creation of 
3D computer generated effects. 
They recently added YOUNG 
HERCULES to their production 
roster as well as independent 
theatrical films such as BLADE. 

In "Warrior...Princess... 
Tramp" and “Warrior...Priest¬ 
ess... Tramp" Lucy Lawless was 
called upon to fill three distinct 
roles. In both shows she played 
Xena and Meg, a Grecian floozy. 
In “Princess" she also played Di¬ 
ana, and her third role in “Priest¬ 
ess” was Leah a Hestian virgin 
priestess. O'Neill and company 
were called upon to convincing¬ 
ly show the actress in two or 
three roles simultaneously. 

“It’s a pretty standard trick,” 
O'Neill explained, “they've 
been doing all the way back to 
the days of Georges Melies and 
such. On Lucy Lawless' part it 
required a costume change for 
each role which they, of course, 
had to do very quickly and turn 
around because (a) they had to 
make their day, and (b) because 
they couldn't break the camera 
setup for the visual effect of the 


split screen without screwing up 
the background. Typically on 
those simple shots we'd lock the 
camera down and have Lucy 
portray her part on the left side, 
in the middle after a costume 
change and then a third costume 
change on the right side as if 
there were three Lucys in one 
shot. For the tricky shots, some¬ 
times we'd actually have the 
camera move into position with 
one of the characters and do 
what is called a soft lock off. 
Then we’d have Lucy finish her 
performance as character A, do a 
costume change, finish her per¬ 
formance as character B, and 
then do a second costume 
change and do her third charac¬ 
ter, if there were three of her 
characters in the frame. A couple 
of times, in order to facilitate the 
day and because we wanted to 
do a slightly trickier visual ef¬ 
fects shot, we might have one 
character hand off something to 
another while they are both be¬ 
ing played by Lucy. We d have 
her portray one character in the 


background plate and then, later- 
on in the schedule, have her in 
front of a blue screen, then comp 
into the background plate later in 
post production. Those are the 
kind of tricks that involve visual 
effects. I know that the director 
in at least one of the episodes. 
Josh Becker, studied a lot of old¬ 
er movies like THE BLACK 
ROOM, a [1935J picture where 
there were a lot of what they call 


camera hook ups. That's where a 
character would walk behind a 
big column as one character and 
then you'd lock a camera down 
and have her do a costume 
change and then do the rest of 
the move again in the second 
character. That’s an old trick in 
the business where you'd have 
foreground objects act as soft 
wipes for changes of character 
while the camera is supposedly 
continuously moving. So there’s 
a little bit of everything in each 
of those episodes.” 

While XENA is not heavy 
with 3D animation creatures. Flat 
Earth uses its bag of tricks to pro¬ 
duce an array of visuals. One 
episode called for a distant vol¬ 
cano. The shot of Xena, with the 
volcano in the background and 
3D cloud elements was composit¬ 
ed by Phil Carbonaro. In one 
show Xena is dragged into an are¬ 
na by two guards. The shot was 
another composite, this time using 
a Phil Carbonaro matte painting. 
“The first tier from the ground up 
is a set,” explained Kevin O'Neill, 
“and everything above her and 
some of the parts behind her and 


Xena holds up the head of minstrel Orpheus (Matthew Chamberlain) In effects 
heavy “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." a motion tracked blue screen composite. 



40 


I 















Lucy Lawless as XENA gets attacked by the Dryads of second season's “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, K Flat Earth CGI. 


pull the rubber head out of the 
bag itself. That was a back¬ 
ground plattc. We then went and 
shot a blue screen element of 
Chamberlain doing his perfor¬ 
mance. We locked him down so 
that his body didn't move, we put 
a tracking mark on his throat and 
shot the performance of him 
opening his eyes looking at Lucy 
and screaming. Those two ele¬ 
ments were sent to Kevin 
Kutchaver who then composited 
the blue screen head on top of the 
rubber head. Actually, the mo¬ 
tion-tracked the head out of the 
bag, rotoed the bag over the head 
so it looked like it came out of 
the bag itself and also blended 
the real actor's hair into the 
clump of hair that Lucy was 
holding on the rubber head so it 
really looked like she was hold¬ 
ing his head. If you look real 
close the head actually swings 
like it was on a fulcrum from the 
hair so she's sort of swinging it 
back and forth as he screams. 
Everything below the real actor's 
neck was rotoed out so it was just 


the two guys is a matte painting. 
We replicated a whole series of 
people. We built the architecture 
that they're sitting in which we 
had to match to the set.” 

The effects-heavy "Girls Just 
Wanna Have Fun” not only 
called for a gang of flying skele¬ 
tons called Dryads, but a disem¬ 
bodied head. Xena and Gabrielle 
are up against the god Bacchus 
who has stolen the body of a 


minstrel named Orpheus whose 
music has a calming effect on the 
rough god, ”On the set we had 
Lucy holding a bag that had a 
rubber head inside it,” said 
O’Neill. "That was a life cast of 
Matthew Chamberlain, the actor 
who played the disembodied 
head. We set up the scene so that 
the camera made a half moon 
dolly track around Lucy as she 
picked up the bag and began to 


Phil Carbonaro composited Xena with clouds horn a distant volcano. The show’s 
effects budget Is less than HERCULES, causing a dearth of 3D CGI creatures. 




“During the first 
meeting with [pro¬ 
ducer Rob Taped], 
I sat there and 
thought that either 
I was hallucinating 
or Rob had 
gone insane.” 


the head.” 

The battle with the Dryads 
required several rehearsals for 
the moving camera tracking 
shots. "We were actually on the 
set,” said O'Neill, "as Lucy and 
Ted Raimi and Gabrielle all 
swung at the air to eye lines that 
we predetermined in a couple 
of rehearsals. We also had a 
couple of fans off the set where 
we blew a lot of dirt and dust 
and debris. That was a back¬ 
ground plate that went back to 
3D where Doug Beswick and 
Everett Burrell and the anima¬ 
tors set up the scene and had the 
Dryads flying in and out of 
frame swiping at Lucy and 
Gabrielle as the action dictated 
in the storyboards. That anima¬ 
tion was rendered out and com¬ 
posited by the 2D department. 

Last season's surprise was the 
"Bitter Suite” episode. "Rob has 
so much going on I couldn’t vi¬ 
sualize what he wanted to have 
happen in the episode,” said 
Kutchaver. “(Producer) Rob [Ta- 
pert] has been living with this 
thing for maybe six months as an 
idea that keeps getting more and 
more involved. During the first 
meeting we had with him I sat 
there and thought that either I 
was hallucinating because the 
room started spinning or Rob 
had gone insane. Really the 
ideas he was throwing out were 
wild. There are going to be 
singing animals. It's going to be 
a musical. Then we're going to 
have this guy floating and every¬ 
one blows up. It sounded nuts.” 

Tapcrt was originally going 
to direct the episode, but finally 
Olcy Sassone took the helm for 
the musical extravaganza. The 


41 
















first problem was to have 
Tapert, who knew exactly 
what he wanted, communi¬ 
cate his vision to the effects 
people. Since the producer 
wasn’t an artist, Kutchaver 
and O'Neill brought in a 
storyboard artist to work 
with Tapert to define his vi¬ 
sions. 

“The musical episode is 
an anomaly,” said Kutch¬ 
aver, “a blip when you con¬ 
sider the other 22 episodes. 

Our biggest creative in¬ 
volvement in the musical 
Xena were the tarot cards. 

The artist who worked with 
him blocked out all the vi¬ 
sual stuff that Rob wanted 
to see happen in the 
episode. He wanted it to be 
very strange. He wanted it 
to be a big fantasy, almost a 
surreal show." 

When Tapert a p - 
proached O’Neill about the 
effects for XENA he ex¬ 
plained that their budget 
didn’t allow for 3D crea¬ 
tures. The show was being 
sold as an action series not 
dependent on special ef¬ 
fects. Tapert, however, 
needed something to grab 
the audience and attract 
them to the spin-off and a 
classic case of the cart be¬ 
fore the horse was born. 

What he wanted was one 
shot of Neptune, King of 
the Sea rising out of the ^ 

water. “We actually did a 
visual effect for the title se¬ 
quence,” explained Kutchaver, 
“A 3D character of Neptune all 
made out of water in a hu¬ 
manoid form rising out and 
threatening Lucy as Xena who 
is standing there on a precipice. 
So our first visual effects shot 
wasn’t even for an episode but a 
title sequence. 

“Once the show became a hit, 
fans started writing letters and go¬ 
ing on the internet asking what 
episode that shot was from. Is this 
a lost episode? So in true televi¬ 
sion history style they felt they 
had to pony up the dough in terms 
of what they had already 
promised so we did an episode, 
actually three episodes, with Po¬ 
seidon so far. In the second season 
we did two. Last season we did 
another one. So that’s the legend 
of the fust 3D creature we did.” 

Giants have been used in 
several episodes including the 


* .it 


t 0 


Flat Earth multiplied Lucy Lawless for a trio of roles In the third season acting tour de 
force "Warrior.. .Princes*. ..Tramp." Below: A Phil Carbonaro matte painting adds scope to 
Uie show as Xana la dragged Into an arena by armed guards. Only the flrat tier of the 
stadium was built as a set, the rest Including extra*, are added CGI constructs. 


premiere show “Sins of the 
Past” and “Giant Killer,” the 
David and Goliath story, Xena 
style. “The giants are created by 
the age old technique of forced 
perspective," said O’Neill. “We 
line up the camera so that the ac¬ 
tors, such as Xena and Gabrielle 
who are human size are placed 
in a position that represents a 
certain scale with buildings and 
such that is normal. Then we 
build a platform between those 
actors and the camera and dress 
up the platform where the 
ground would be to match the 
ground that Xena would be 
standing on. Then an actor 
walks on that platform and using 
a combination of specific wide 
angle lenses based on the size of 
the frame and the distance to the 
regular actors in the distance the 
scale of what the giant should 
be, we take that lens information 


and futz with it so that the focus 
is sharp between our giant and 
the background where we have 
our real people. The actual com¬ 
posite happens in the camera." 

The vicious Harpies that 
guard the entrance to Hades 
palace in “Mortal Beloved,” a 
first season episode of XENA, 
were the first 3D creatures 
specifically created for the 
show. “Lucy ends up at the end 
of an episode in a haunted de¬ 
serted castle that was guarded 
by a pair of Harpies, female 
winged creatures, that attacked 
her,” said Kutchaver. "The inter¬ 
esting thing about that was that 
there was so little time to design 
a set beyond the courtyard of the 
castle that they were going to 
have to create for the walk and 
talk photography. We came back 
to them and suggested that they 
surround the set with blue 


screen. Then we’d set up 
the whole fight sequence up 
on a bridge or wall that sur¬ 
rounds the courtyard and 
we’ll create the entire back¬ 
ground behind the creatures 
as well as the creatures in 
3D. So that whole fight se¬ 
quence at the end which I 
think is the last seven or 
eight minutes of the 
episode was an entire CGI 
3D animation 2D compos¬ 
ite environment with the 
exception of the courtyard.” 

Impressed with the 
Harpies, the producers want- 
cd to use them again, but 
with a different slant. They 
were preparing a Halloween 
episode at the time called 
“Girls Just Wanna Have 
Fun,” directed by T.J. Scott. 
The god Bacchus turns a 
group of his maiden minions 
into Bacchae, flying vampire 
creatures and Xena and 
Gabrielle are out to stop 
them. “We had just done an 
episode where we did a little 
homage to JASON AND 
THE ARGONAUTS with 
the skeleton fight sequence.” 
said Kutchaver. “So we 
combined the two ideas and 
we came up with skeleton 
harpies called Dryads. So we 
took the harpies and we 
made a version that flew 
around and attacked Lucy in 
a graveyard when they were 
looking for Harpy bones to 
kill Bacchus who was the 
villain of the week." 

The 3D creature effects on 
XENA have been light over the 
last few seasons. Instead, Flat 
Earth has been called upon to 
deliver environmental 3D shots. 
“In ULYSSES,” said Kutchaver, 
“which had another appearance 
of Neptune, we had to create a 
giant whirlpool and the folks 
who went into the whirlpool. 
The whole thing had to be creat¬ 
ed out of a computer because 
there was no way that they were 
going to shoot it live.” 

When O’Neill and Kutchaver 
approach the producers about in¬ 
cluding more interesting creature 
effects in an episode they ’re ba¬ 
sically told that Xena isn’t about 
effects. It’s about her and her 
friend. “It all depends on what 
the writers come up with. They 
feel that the effects might get in 
the way of their story telling. It 
falls into a formula." 


42 








Although Tapert likes his 
brainchild, “The Bitter Suite," he 
even hail reservations about that. 
The musical episode was the sec¬ 
ond part of a dark two-part story 
that began on "Maternal In¬ 
stincts,” in which Xena’s son is 
killed. 

Lucy I-awless. who had been 
trained as a singer, used her 
own voice in the show as did 
Kevin Smith, a New Zealand 
musician who plays the god of 
war. Ares, and Ted Raimi, the 
comic relief Joxer. 

As the title character, much 
of the burden for the show lies 
on the shoulders of Lucy Law¬ 
less. As the actress progressed 
in the role, her wide range be- 



Husband and wife team: Lawless takes direction from series chietf Roto' 
nimlna fourth season s "Paradise Found." The couple were married March 1998. 





oLucy Lawless can 
go from being the 
Clint Eastwood bad 


guy to caring mother 
to best friend,” said 
Tapert. “That she can 
do comedy & drama’s 
quite a surprise.” 


came apparent and the producer 
tapped into her burgeoning po¬ 
tential. “Certainly the more we 
pushed the envelope, the more 
we asked out of Lucy." he said. 
“The more we got, the more we 
liked, so the more we added to 
it. Now- what I like about the 
show- is the relation between 
Xena and Gabrielle and how we 
play with that relationship. How 
they interact. ! don t think there 
is any show on television that 
has such a wide range and it 
comes really from the story 
lines. We do comedy, we do sto¬ 
ries like the ones where the 
child Xena left to be raised by 
somebody else is killed by 
Gabrielle’s daughter. There are 
shades of dark and light and 
everything in between.’ 

The lion’s share of the credit 
for the show’s success Tapert 
gives to Lucy Lawless. "She con¬ 
tinues to surprise me all the time. 
What attracted us was her perfor¬ 
mance in HERCULES. She was 
in the first two-hour Here movie 
we shot, HhRCULLS AND THL 
AMAZON WOMEN. She had a 
minor role in that and then she 
went off and did something and 
wasn’t available for a long time. 
When she came back we put her 
in a couple of HERC ULLS 
movies and she was just great. In 
one of them she played a bad girl 
who gave Hercules a potion that 
made him blind. Somebody else 
had originally been cast to play 
Xena because we had just used 
Lucy. When that person fell out, 
we slotted Lucy in and the rest is 
history." 

Tapert was impressed by 
lawless’ dramatic range as film¬ 
ing ensued. I actually think 
Lucy is just a great comedian 


and understands jokes and how¬ 
to do physical comedy, and 
that’s very rare," said Tapert. 
‘-'That she is willing to allow her¬ 
self to be shown in that kind of 
light is interesting because in or¬ 
der to do comedy you’ve got to 
kind of strip yourself of all pre¬ 
tense. You’re at your most vul¬ 
nerable because you have to be 
ugly or stupid to make people 
laugh. She can go from being the 
Clint Eastwood bad guy to the 
caring mother to the best friend. 
That she can do the comedy and 
every dramatic situation she s 
been put into is quite a surprise. 

As each new- season ap¬ 
proaches, the challenge for the 
producer is to find new and in¬ 
teresting plot lines to keep the 
show- vibrant and audiences 
coming back. Noted laperl, 
“Each season we ask ourselves 
what haven’t people seen? What 
are we going to do with the 
characters? It’s finding ways to 
make it fresh for us, for the ac¬ 
tors, for the audience. Because if 
we really just did the same show 
week after week people would 
get bored of it. That’s the one 
thing that I w anted for Here and 
Xena. When you tuned in each 
week you wouldn’t know if this 
was going to be tunny or was it 
going to be dark. That was my 
goal, to have a show that would 
have a wide enough tapestry that 
you could laugh and cry at the 
same show." 

As everyone at Renaissance 
admits, Tapert is the focal point, 
the visionary for all three shows. 
His major contribution is to 
work with the writers to develop 
stories to a point where they can 
be filmed and to insure the in¬ 


tegrity of the characters. “Far 
more closely then they wish,’’ he 
said referring to his interface 
with R.J. Stewart and the writ¬ 
ing staff. “I’m involved in every 
heat sheet. I’m involved in 
every draft of the script and I 
give extensive notes. I work 
with the editing and follow 
through on every single episode 
editorially. Certainly every key 
one, those episodes that are go¬ 
ing to be in the sweeps week or 
leading into them." 

For a wacky change of pace, 
Stewart wrote “The Furies" 
episode where Xena, through 
one of Ares’ plots, is cursed and 
driven mad by the Furies. As 
the crazy Xena, Lawless brings 
a new demented image to the 
role reminiscent, not coinciden¬ 
tally, of a well-known trio of 
frenetic comedians. "1 actually 
wrote the Three Stooges into 
the script," said Stewart. I ac¬ 
tually said ‘she goes like the 
Three Stooges.' What I was tap¬ 
ping into there was a long tradi¬ 
tion of playing insanity on the 
edge of seriousness and come¬ 
dy. I knew that Lucy could do it 
because Lucy is really good. 
Some people loved it and some 
people couldn’t stand her doing 
the Three Stooges." 

The one time travel episode, 
“The Xena Scrolls,” moves the 
action into the 1940s where 
Lucy Lawless and Renee 
O’Connor play a pair of arche¬ 
ologists who find the lost 
scrolls. “We only did that one 
time ” said Stewart. “That was a 
bizarre idea. That was a case 
where I don’t think Rob was to¬ 
tally behind it at first but I think 
it worked out great. Just coinci¬ 


dentally, 1 happened to have 
been down in New Zealand for 
that one. I get down there a cou¬ 
ple of times a year. The produc¬ 
tion people were loving that be¬ 
cause it was a change of pace 
for them. They loved the idea of 
using those Forties clothes and 
the different sets and the explo¬ 
sions. We did pyrotechnics so 
they loved that. It was obvious¬ 
ly a big stretch for them to cre¬ 
ate a completely different pro¬ 
duction look. On the writing 
side, we enjoyed it too, because 
we were doing sort oi an Indi¬ 
ana Jones homage." 

The characters were given 
another twist when Xena and 
Hercules were costarred in an 
animated film released by Uni¬ 
versal Home Video, entitled 
HERC ULES AND XEN A: THE 
BATTLE FOR MOUNT 
OLYMPUS. While Tapert and 
Sam Raimi were the executive 
producers on the feature, which 
marked their introduction to ani¬ 
mation, it was made indepen¬ 
dently. “It was a good learning 
experience in animation for us, 
said Tapert, “because there is 
some stuff that I loved and some 
stuff that I just have to close my 
eyes for. I wish they’d let us do 
another because now 1 know 
what I would do differently. 1 
would disregard any kid aspect 
to it. I thought they did a nice 
job with Xena but I think Her¬ 
cules, Gabrielle and lolaus were 
all not very interestingly drawn. 
They tried something with color 
backgrounds that made it look 
cheesy, like Sixties animation. 
But there were some really 
beautiful sequences in it too. If 1 
got to do it again. I would do a 

43 


















WARRIOR PRINCESS 


FANTASY RENAISSANCE 

Renaissance Pictures development exec Liz 
Friedman on giving the series a humorous touch. 



Xena and Gabrielle with Tad Raimi as comedy loll Joxer, facing the winged 
vampire legions of Bacchus in second season’s "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. 


By Dan Scapperotti 

One of the lesser known 
facts about the XENA: WAR¬ 
RIOR PRINCESS program are 
the hilarious disclaimers such 
as “No winged Harpies were 
harmed or sent to a fiery grave 
during the production of this 
motion picture,” which are 
tucked away among the credit 
scrawls at the end of each show. 
Most television stations that run 
XENA reduce the credits to a 
postage stamp size and fill the 
screen with trailers for upcom¬ 
ing shows or clips from XENA. 
Too bad. 

This clever post-production 
joke could only have found its 
genesis in the mind of a genre 
fan. Those disclaimers are the 
brain child of Liz Friedman, an 
executive who has worked her 
way up through the ranks of Re¬ 
naissance Pictures. 

Until recently, when she was 
promoted to executive in charge 
of development at Renissance, 
Friedman was intimately in¬ 
volved in every show. “Up to 
that point I was pretty much in¬ 
volved with every story meeting 
on HERCULES and XENA, 
every script meeting and the 
hiring of directors. I looked at 
almost every cut of the show, 
worked with the writers on 
brainstorming stories and then 
working out problems. 1 d talk 
to New Zealand about the prob¬ 
lems or concerns they had with 
the scripts. When the show 
came back to us after it had 
been shot l’d work through the 
post-production process.” 

Now firmly planted on tele¬ 
vision, the company’s produc¬ 
tion focus is solely for that 
medium. With a proven track 


record, projects in development 
at Renaissance tend to be genre 
oriented, “It’s easier for us to 
sell something that has a Re¬ 
naissance edge to it,” Friedman 
explained. “If it has action or 
special effects or horror, 
whether or not it’s specifically 
one of those genre pieces, it cer¬ 
tainly makes sense to buy that 
from us. Just like you probably 
wouldn’t buy an action show 
from the people who did 
FRIENDS. They’re probably 
not going to buy a traditional 
three camera sitcom from us.” 

Renaissance certainly put 
New Zealand on the movie¬ 
making map. The decision to 
travel into the Southern Hemi¬ 
sphere to film the tales of An¬ 
cient Greece was driven by both 
economic and cinematic fac¬ 
tors. “We filmed HERCULES 
down there first and then XE¬ 
NA went down there,” said 
Friedman. “The two produc¬ 
tions share some basic elements 


that make it a lot more afford¬ 
able to make those shows down 
there so there’s an amortization 
of costs that happens. We went 
down there for HERCULES be¬ 
cause the country has such a 
great look. It really looks like 
that land before time and you 
buy it. It’s also very different 
from the classical, or I should 
say typical representation of an¬ 
cient Greece as being sort of dry 
and barren which isn’t what I 
think people want to look at on 
television. Then there was also 
the factor that the New Zealand 
dollar was very cheap when we 
first went there.” 

Friedman credits the success 
of XENA to the same factors 
that made another science fic¬ 
tion franchise so successful, 
“I’m a huge ROBOCOP fan,” 
she said. “That’s one of the 
greatest, smartest movies ever. 
One of the things I love about it 
is that I think it absolutely 
works on two levels, which is 


one of the reasons I think XE¬ 
NA has been so successful. 
ROBOCOP works as just a 
straight action film. It also 
works as a very smart satire of 
society and corporate economy, 
loss of identity to technology. 
XENA works as a straight 
ahead tits-and-ass action show 
for lack of a more intellectual 
term. It’s an action show but 
the lead is first of all a woman 
and second of all a woman who 
never apologizes for being 
strong. It features two women 
who have a very intense rela¬ 
tionship, who do not spend all 
of their time talking about ei¬ 
ther their sanitary protection or 
their boyfriends. In this way it 
ends up being, compared to 
what is typically on television, 

I think, fairly subversive. 1 
don’t think we could get away 
with all that if it weren't work¬ 
ing on the fact that it is enter¬ 
taining. It’s a good kick-ass ac¬ 
tion show.” 

An off-handed remark gave 
birth to those wacky disclaimers 
in the show’s end credits. Dur¬ 
ing a playback session of a mix 
midway through working on the 
first order of 13 HERCULES 
shows, Friedman turned to co¬ 
ordinating producer Bernic 
Joyce who runs the post produc¬ 
tion department and said, “I 
wish we could say, ‘No Cen¬ 
taurs were harmed during the 
making of this motion picture.’ 
That would be so funny.” Joyce 
looked at her and said, “We 
can.” 

Recalled Friedman, “After 
that first 13 is when we had our 
second season of HERCULES 
and then we got XENA too. 
Then we just started doing it for 
every show. Bernic is great. She 


44 








Lucy Lawless as Xena, surrounded by Hera's soldiers in first season's "Prometheus." Friedman noted that Renaissance 
Pictures chose New Zealand as a production base for the series for its variety of locations and economic cost savings. 


makes a huge contribution to 
the show. Bcrnie and 1 would 
bounce it back and forth and 
other people would sometimes 
contribute. It had to pass 
Bcrnie's funny meter first and 
then mine and then we kept fry¬ 
ing to top ourselves. You do sec 
that they get more and more 
outrageous as we go along.” 

While decisions for the dis¬ 
claimers usually stay within 
post-production there was one 
that hit the cutting room floor. 
“The funniest one that we never 
got to use that I'm going to re¬ 
gret forever is on the episode 
'Return of Callisto,’” said 
Friedman. “It’s the one where 
Gabricllc marries her childhood 
sweetheart and Callisto kills 
him. In it Gabricllc marries 
Perdicas and they have their 
wedding night. So our dis¬ 
claimer was, ‘The producers 
would like to thank Gabriclle’s 
virginity for the role it has 
played in our series. It will sore¬ 
ly be missed.’ No one knows 
exactly what happened, but 
somehow the studio got told 
about it and they told us we had 
to change it. I'll always be a tit¬ 
tle sad about it.” 

A third season follow-up to 
the “Warrior...Princess... 
Tramp" episode where Lucy 
Lawless plays three different 
roles, was “Warrior...Priest¬ 
ess...Tramp.” For that episode 
Friedman came up with “De¬ 
spite another Xena look-alike 


the gene pool (or rather the gene 
puddle) was not harmed during 
the making of this motion pic¬ 
ture.” The quirkiness of the 
show can have a slapstick edi¬ 
tion one week followed by a se¬ 
rious drama the next. Which 
does Friedman prefer? “I prefer 
the darker ones,” she said. “I 
like comedy a lot and I do love 
to laugh but 1 love dramatic sto¬ 
rytelling. I love a good story 
and a good twist. I think it puts 
your hero in a bind. I think 
we’ve done some great come¬ 
dies but by the time these things 
are done I’ve watched them 
four or five times and some¬ 
times those laughs get a little 
thin, after about the fifth view- 

' _ H 

ing. 

Since becoming Sam Rai¬ 
mi’s assistant in 1991, Fried¬ 
man’s unique talents have been 
recognized and she has moved 
up the corporate ladder going 
through a dizzying progression 
of titles along the way. “My 
first credit on one of the 
DARKMAN movies is some¬ 
thing absolutely absurd like as¬ 
sociate in charge of blue screen 
effects. 

“In terms of the HERCULES 
and XENA stuff, first I was the 
creative associate for a couple 
of seasons on HERCULES, 
then I was an associate produc¬ 
er. On XENA I started as a co¬ 
producer because that was a 
show that I developed and 
helped launch. Then I became a 


producer, a supervising produc¬ 
er and now I'm the co-executive 
producer.” 

Between the two shows, Fried¬ 
man has produced nine seasons 
of television programming. 
Some shows in the grueling 
pace are harder than others. 
“The two XENAs at the end of 
last season ‘Sacrifice I’ and 
‘Sacrifice II’ were very tough,” 
she said, "because there were a 
lot of story threads that we 
wanted to work out. Doing 
two-parters demands a particu¬ 
lar balance. Do you construct 
your stories as if there's one 
big story playing over two 
shows or as if each one is its 
own little arc? “It’s an interest¬ 
ing exercise but it’s pretty 
tough. ‘ThciBitter Suite,’our 
musical, was grueling. Rob Ta- 
pert put all of his blood, sweat 
and tears into that one. It was 
the production killer to end all 
episodes. Incredibly expensive, 
but it turned out really well. On 
most shows there arc moments 
when you think this just isn’t 
going to work. Not to congrat¬ 
ulate ourselves too much, but, 
basically, you have five pretty 
smart people sitting in a room 
absolutely stumped and then 
someone comes up with some¬ 
thing that turns it around. 
Someone will say, ‘What if?’ 
and, suddenly, it all falls into 
place. That's the beauty of 
TV—you just have to get it 
done.” □ 



“We try to balance 
the show by doing 
a couple of dark ones 
then lighter ones and 
some straightforward 
adventures,” noted 
Taped. “I do like to 
keep that mix.” 


much harder story animated.” 

The cross-over factor is sig¬ 
nificant on both HERCULES 
and XENA. The shows film in 
New Zealand, where there is a 
much smaller casting pool than 
in the U.S. So, besides the 
Greek gods who bounce from 
series to scries, there are other 
characters who have appeared 
on both shows. One of the most 
popular recurring villains of the 
week was played by the sultry 
Hudson Leiek. The Cincinnati 
native plays Callisto, a woman 
from Xena’s past. When she 
was a child Callisto saw her 
mother and sister killed when 
Xena’s army destroyed their vil¬ 
lage. Now a demented warrior, 
Callisto is on a revenge quest 


Renaissance development exec Uz 
Friedman began as assistant to Sam 
Raimi, and nursed XENA from the start. 



45 













Michael Hurst directs Lucy Lawless and Renee O'Connor in fourth season s “A 
Tale of Two Muses." The show is among the highest-rated hours in syndication. 



“There’s no question 


that it’s a story 
of the love between 
Xena & Gabrielle,” 
said Tapert. “But if 
there’s a sexual re¬ 
lationship, it's none 
of my business . 77 


aimed at the Warrior Princess. 

Callisto was the brainchild 
of R. J. Stewart, a producer who 
heads up the show. “I was 
thinking of the terrible things 
Xena had done.” said Stewart. 
“In fact in the back story that 
we set for her, she’s almost a 
war criminal. 1 thought she got 
off awfully easy. Suddenly she 
decides to do good. I thought 
there must be somebody out 
there who suffered from her evil 
days and who wants revenge. 
Then I said to myself, ‘what if 
that one is a beautiful woman 
who in some ways is emulating 
Xena. but in a dark way,’ and 
that’s how Callisto evolved. 
Sort of a piece of her past come 
back to haunt her. Then, of 
course, casting Hudson Leick 
was the other half of that equa¬ 
tion.” 

"Hudson is great,” said Ta¬ 
pert. “I like her a lot. We had a 
casting call and as soon as Hud¬ 
son walked in the room we 
knew she was the one. But now 
she’s gone. We killed her off in 
‘The Sacrifice 11.* She’s gone 
for good.” 

The veritable Bruce Camp¬ 
bell who had starred in Tapert’s 
EVIL DEAD trilogy, plays Au- 
tolycus, the thief. The character 
originated on HERCULES in 
the second season opener, 
“King of Thieves,” but has 
made many return engagements 
on XENA, starting with “Royal 
Couple of Thieves,” When a 
group of warlords get together 
to bid on a chest containing a 
weapon that may mean world 
domination, Xena and Autoly- 
cus team up to steal the trea¬ 
sure. “Bruce and I go back 20 


years,” Tapert explained. “I 
think Bruce is the modern-day 
equivalent of Cary Grant and 
nobody really uses him in that 
role or that part." 

Another of the comedy relief 
characters that populate ancient 
Greece is Joxer. the Mighty. Ted 
Raimi, Renaissance partner 
Sam’s younger brother, plays 
Joxer, whose swagger and 
bravado over-compensate for 
his lack of any martial arts 
skills. Dressed in Grecian retro 
armor. Joxer frequently crosses 
paths with Xena and Gabrielle. 
The vagabond warrior has an 
unrequited romantic interest in 
Gabrielle. “I’ve known Ted 
even longer then I’ve known 
Bruce,” said Tapert. “In ‘C’allis- 
lo’ we wanted a kind of bum¬ 
bling, comedy character and I 
thought of Ted. I showed some 
film of him to the guys and they 
loved him. He’s great in it. He 
likes Gabrielle, but I 'm not sure 
she’s all that interested.” 

Other supporting characters 
include Salmoneus, played by 
American actor Robert Trebor, 
who has appeared in 25 
episodes of HERCULES and 
XENA, and Ares, the God of 
War. Ares, played by a New 
Zealand musician, Kevin Smith, 
has had a love-hate relationship 
with Xena since she thwarted 
his plans for Darphus in “Un¬ 
chained Heart.” He loves her. 
She hates him. He pops up now 
and again with a new plan to a) 
seduce the Warrior Princess, or 
b) destroy her out of spile. 

Since Lucy Lawless is the 
center of attention on the pro¬ 
gram, her schedule is as rugged 
as anyone’s on television. There 


are times during the shooting 
schedule when, because of oth¬ 
er business commitments or in¬ 
dustry conventions. Lawless is¬ 
n’t available. She attends 
NAPTE (National Association 
of Programming Television Ex¬ 
ecutives) annually, a television 
sales convention for syndica¬ 
tors. “We generally have to do 
at least one episode that doesn’t 
have Lucv in it in order to shoot 
in that time period,” Tapert ex¬ 
plained. “If we know that there 
are going to be some really dif¬ 
ficult episodes, we try to design 
one or two to give Lucy a little 
bit of time off because she is of¬ 
ten in almost every single shot, 
like the two openers for this 
season. That gets tough on a 
regular TV schedule. 

“I believe that Lucy has the 
hardest schedule of anybody 
working on television. Just by 
the nature of the show. I know 
David Duchovny would argue 
that he’s got the longest sched¬ 
ule, but I think both of them 
have those bragging rights. He 
doesn’t, however, have the 
physical demands of XENA, 
but he does have the hours.” 

Almost from the show’s pre¬ 
miere, lesbian groups were 
drawn to the relationship be¬ 
tween Xena and Gabrielle. As 
the thread of that bond stretched 
out, the writers pushed the 
boundaries solidifying the feel¬ 
ings the pair have for each oth¬ 
er. Even Ares, the God of War is 
bewildered by the relationship. 
Pointing to Gabrielle in one 
episode, he says to Xena, “I still 
don't see what you see in her.” 
“We’re not really playing to that 
audience.” said Tapert diplo¬ 


matically. “There is a love rela¬ 
tionship. meaning there’s no 
question that Xena and 
Gabrielle love each other and 
are willing to lie down their 
lives for each other, but 1 don’t 
necessarily want to say that 
they have a sexual relationship 
cither. There’s no question that 
it is a story of the love between 
two characters, but if there’s a 
sexual relationship between 
them, it’s none of my business.” 

Since syndicated television 
doesn’t have the censorial road¬ 
blocks lhat often plague net¬ 
work productions, XENA de¬ 
pends more on a system of self¬ 
policing to maintain standards 
lhat would be acceptable both 
to their affiliates and the brass 
at Universal Television, the 
company that distributes the 
show. “The Gauntlet" episode is 
a case in point. Betrayed by her 
troops, Xena must suffer the 
ravages of running the gauntlet, 
a path lined with warriors who 
pummel her as she runs through 
their ranks. 

“That scene was trimmed 
and it was trimmed by me,” said 
Tapert emphatically. “No one 
was pushing me. It was one of 
the few times lhat 1 saw- some¬ 
thing that we had shot that was 
too strong even though my hand 
was all over that episode. I 
pushed the director and the 
writer to write this because they 
wanted to redeem the character. 
They wanted her to go off with 
the baby at the end and I said, 
‘You guys are out of your fuck¬ 
ing minds.’ We did shoot it. It 
was a really rough sequence and 
I did trim it back and 1 tried to 
play it with very low sound ef¬ 
fects and make the music coun¬ 
terpoint to the violence. Make it 
operatic in its fee! and tone." 

Are there any themes that are 
taboo for XENA? “Not as long 
as everything’s handled intelli¬ 
gently,” said Tapert. “There arc 
no standards and practices that 
we have to show anything to. It's 
just what the advertisers are will¬ 
ing to have their product at¬ 
tached to. There is no real board. 
It s not like a network where 
there’s Standards and Practices. 
This is first-run syndicated tele¬ 
vision. They don’t have the 
same—1 want to say restraints, 
but that’s not the right word— 
the same censorship problems. 
We get away with more than net¬ 
work television.” 


46 








WARRIOR PRINCESS 


APHRODITE 


Alexandra Tydings plays 
mythology a la Mae West. 


By James G. 
Boutilier 

X E N aT WAR RIOR 

PRINCESS and its inspiration, 
HERCULES: THE LEG¬ 
ENDARY JOURNEY have 
made a hit with swashbuckling 
adventure, witty humor and 
beautiful, scantily-clad women. 
Bridging both series with se¬ 
ductive whimsy has been Alex- 
adra Tydings as the beautiful 
but prissy Goddess of 
Love, Aphrodite. 

Aphrodite, played with shad¬ 
ings of Mac West, has been a 
welcome addition to XENA’s 
heroic pantheon. She’s a god¬ 
dess in a bustier: the immortal 
half-sister of Hercules; sister of 
Ares the god of war and general 
tick in the trousers of any 
male — immortal or not—who 
crosses her path. 

Noted Tydings, “After I did 
some research I found out that 
in a lot of the stories she could 
be very cruel. And then obvi¬ 
ously there was the humor of 


the script and the anachronistic 
speech that she uses. That was 
fun to toy with. I got together 
with my acting teacher, who 
coaches me on everything I do 
and we played with the humor 
and threw some Mae West in 
there.” 

The show’s revealing outfits 
didn’t phase the actress, though 
she admitted, “When 1 get up at 
five o’clock in the morning and 
show up on the set, the last 
thing I want to do is put on a 
wig and a Wonder bra, but that's 
my job. 

“I won’t make apologies for 
Aphrodite,” said Tydings. 
“There’s nothing wrong with 
having sexy women portrayed 
in our culture, it’s just what we 
do with them that gets danger¬ 
ous. That kind of thing can sell 
show. People like to look at 
women’s bodies. But the show 
doesn’t do violence to women. 
It’s not exploitative in that 
way.” 

It is a pretty exhausting 
transformation the actress goes 


Have Wonderbra will travel: Tydings In third season XENA show "Fins, Femmes 
and Gams,” playing Ares’ sister with loopy Valley Girl speech and demeanor 




lydlnga as Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love In HERCULES fourth season 
episode “One Fowl Day," borrowing moves from the legendary Mae West. 


through to become her infa¬ 
mous other self. “That's were 
the work comes in. Getting up 
every morning as early as 3:30, 
driving out to the set, sitting in 
the makeup chair. I actually 
don’t have it as bad as the 
makeup girls, because they 
have to get there before I do, 
and they have to go right to 
work. I can sit there and zone 
out and have a cup cf tea.” 

Tydings noted that her role 
of Aphrodite amounts to a 
“transformation. Physically it’s 
enormous. I’ve run into people 
from the crew, who are looking 
at me all day long, and they 
don’t recognize me. I’m not a 
goddess, certainly not 
Aphrodite.” 

Tydings termed the roles ex¬ 
posure difficult and not always 
fun. I wear a robe on set, except 
sometimes when it's really su¬ 
per hot. Sometimes the makeup 
girls have to come over and 


powder my chest. That’s always 
fun with all the gaffers standing 
right there!" Tydings laughed, 
“But they are a respectful group 
and a respectful production.” 

The ironic thing about 
Aphrodite is that, for a Love 
goddess, she is remarkably an¬ 
tagonistic, and in fact, in some 
episodes is the harbinger of 
wars — usually because of her 
disregard for the consequences 
her playing with mortal men 
causes, as in the XENA episode. 
“For Him the Bells Toll." 

“I never think of her as a 
bad guy, because I have to em¬ 
pathize with her" said Tydings, 
“and try to justify it all to my¬ 
self. She wrecks havoc, but I 
don’t think she means any¬ 
thing by it. Mostly she is just 
having fun. She can be petty 
and jealous, and then she just 
has to do what she has to do to 
get whatever she thinks she 
has to have.” □ 


47 
















Wes Craven offers a 
color update of the 
creepy ’62 shocker. 


By Mitch Persons 

When J. Michael McCarthy, 
the young and dynamic produc¬ 
er/writer/director of the under- 
ground films THE SORE 
LOSERS, and TEENAGE TU¬ 
PELO, was told that Wes 
Craven and Trimark Pictures 
was about to embark on a re¬ 
make of the film CARNIVAL 
OF SOULS, he asked. “Why re¬ 
make that one?” 

Good question. The original 
1962 CARNIVAL OF SOULS 
was the disturbing fable of 
Mary Henry (Candace 
Hilligoss), a woman who has 
apparently survived an acciden¬ 
tal drowning. Though physical¬ 
ly unharmed, Mary finds herself 
in a strange limbo state. She 
moves to a new locale and a 
new job, but is apathetic to the 
point of catatonia. Eager for 
companionship, she neverthe¬ 
less spurns the advances of her 
lecherous next-door neighbor 


(Sidney Berger) The only ele¬ 
ment in her life strong enough 
to elicit an emotional response 
is the compulsion she feels to 
visit an abandoned carnival 
building on the outskirts of the 
town. She is constantly haunted 
by the spectre of a pasty-faced 
ghoul (played by the produc¬ 
er/director, the late Hcrk Har¬ 
vey). Drawn by the ghoul to the 
carnival building, Mary discov¬ 
ers that she did not survive the 
car wreck after all. She is joined 
by other dead souls in a dance 
of death. 

In the almost 40 years since 
CARNIVAL OF SOULS de¬ 
buted on the lower half of mid- 
western drive-in double bills, it 
has become something of a 
genre classic. Its disconcerting 
use of the horror element has 
served as an inspiration for such 
filmmakers as George Romero, 
Martin Scorsese, and even Wes 
Craven himself. Mike Mc¬ 
Carthy’s reaction to hearing that 



State-of-the-art makeup effects of carnival freaka beef-up the horror of Trimark 
Plcturea' remake, which la due to hit cable and video outleta later thla year. 



48 
































a remake was in the works was 
typical. CARNIVAL’S many 
admirers view the making of a 
new version as being akin to 
Ted Turner wanting to colorize 
CITIZEN KANE (something, 
thank goodness, that he never 
did). 

Why then, do this new ren¬ 
dering at all? It’s quite true that 
CARNIVAL OF SOULS, de¬ 
spite some technical flaws, 
stands up very well on its own. 
Peter Soby, Jr,, who, along with 
Michael Meltzer, Lisa Harrison, 
and Phil Goldfinc, has a hand in 
producing the film, talks about 
what led him to go (he remake 
route. 

“About three years ago, I 
met Candace Hilligoss,” said 
Soby. “I had already seen CAR¬ 
NIVAL on some late-night TV. 
It had been one of those movies 
whose images really stuck with 
me. I loved it. I had an idea in 
my head that I could pay tribute 
to the movie by doing a remake, 
but didn't know if the rights 
were available. Through Can¬ 
dace, I got to know Berk Har¬ 
vey, and Herk's screenwriter, 
John Clifford. Herk and John 
had been cheated by Hollywood 
with the distribution of CARNI¬ 
VAL. Companies that were sup¬ 
posed to have paid them went 
supposedly bankrupt, and John 
and Herk never got paid their 
percentages. They were pretty 
disgusted with the way things 
turned out. Eventually, Herk, 
John and I got to be good 
friends, and when I offered to 
buy the film from Herk out¬ 
right, he jumped at the chance.” 

“1 loved Herk’s film too,” 
chimcd-in Michael Meltzer, 
“and with this remake, we 
wanted to remain true to his 
themes. But we also did some¬ 
thing else: we added our own 
level of characters and storyline 
that took, and does take, the sto¬ 
ry beyond the initial one. Bob¬ 
bie Phillips plays the Mary 
Henry character, but we’ve re¬ 
named her Alex Grant. Alex 
now has a younger sister, San¬ 
dra, played by Shawnee Smith. 
And there is an extended flash¬ 
back sequence of a horrifying 
incident involving the mother of 
Sandra and Alex that adds con¬ 
siderable depth to Alex’s char¬ 
acter." Comedian Larry Miller, 
in a dramatic change of pace, 
plays a character from Alex’s 
past, as well as a supernatural 


LARRY MILLER 

The comedian on his dark horror turn 
as the celebrated “clown at midnight. ” 



Milter as Louis, the sadistic sociopath and child 
molester who haunts the nightmares of Alex Grant. 


By Mitch 
Persons 

Larry Miller has made 
people laugh in many dif¬ 
ferent ways. He is a bril¬ 
liant stand-up comic. His 
portrayal of the sycophan¬ 
tic dress-shop proprietor 
in PRETTY WOMAN, 
and the hyper school ad¬ 
ministrator in the latest 
THE NUTTY PROFES¬ 
SOR, are considered clas¬ 
sic comedy roles. His an¬ 
noying, if loveable, char¬ 
acterizations have graced 
countless TV sitcoms. It is 
odd, then, to hear that this 
veteran comic actor has 
been cast as a sadistic sociopath 
in the remake of CARNIVAL 
OF SOULS. 

Sitting in a folding chair, his 
face covered in greasy clown 
makeup, his attitude relaxed 
and friendly, it is not easy to 
imagine Milter essaying this 
straight dramatic part, 

“It is true,” he said affably, 
“that I’m known for doing fun¬ 
ny things, or trying to do funny 
things, either as a stand-up com¬ 
ic, or in the 15 movies I’ve been 
in, or the TV shows where I’ve 
played humorously irritating 
men. My last film, FOR RICH¬ 
ER OR POORER, was a come¬ 
dy, and I will probably do some 
more comic turns after I finish 
CARNIVAL. But even though 
I’m known mostly for comedy. 
I’m still an actor, and I like to 
take on a challenge every once 
in a while. 

“The character that 1 play, 
Louis, is a challenge and a half! 
I mean, this is a very, very bad 
guy. If you list the five worst 
things you can think of as 
crimes, this guy has done them 
all. He has no redeeming quali¬ 


ties. None. It'll be very interest¬ 
ing to see how audiences react 
to him because traditionally, 
bad guys can be enjoyed if they 
don't cross a certain line. 

“Jack Nicholson was fabu¬ 
lous and hysterical in BAT¬ 
MAN as The Joker. There was a 
certain detachment there, so 
you could really laugh at him 
and what he was doing. It was a 
cartoon. And then there was An¬ 
thony Hopkins as Hannibal 
Lecter in THE SILENCE OF 
THE LAMBS—he was a horri¬ 
ble, sick murderer, but he was 
also witty and charming. Louis 
is, in some ways, like Nichol¬ 
son’s Joker and Hopkins' 
Lecter. Louis has something of 
a sense of humor, but it’s a 
bawdy, ribald kind of humor, 
but only of the darkest kind. 
Unlike Nicholson and Hopkins, 
there's no pulling back, no de¬ 
tachment. This man is pure evil. 

“That’s the whole thing with 
this slimeball. When I was first 
thinking about the motivations 
for Louis, someone suggested 
to me that * maybe this guy was 
an abused child, which is why 


he is an abuser himself.’ 
That’s what’s current in 
our society right now— 
there has to be a rationale 
for every kind of erratic 
behavior. I don’t buy into 
that. A fellow comic I 
know. Carmen Quinn, 
docs a wonderful line in 
his act. He says. ‘After 
you’ve strangled your 
seventh person, it’s got to 
be more than a bad school 
lunch program.* That’s a 
very darkly funny way of 
looking at what I consider 
the syndrome of just ex¬ 
plaining, rationalizing 
things. With Louis, he's 
not paranoid, or schizo¬ 
phrenic, or even troubled. He’s 
very clear. He’s the happiest 
guy in the world. He absolutely 
loves what he’s doing. 

“In a way, it’s been off-set- 
ting playing this man. I've had to 
do some real soul-searching. I 
have a wife and kid, and like 
most family men, I like to think 
of myself as a good person. 
Now, Louis doesn’t see himself 
as evil. In his own way, he’s as 
normal as I am. It took a long 
time for me to work that delu¬ 
sion of normalcy into his charac¬ 
terization. 

“But even with that. I would 
have second thoughts about my 
own family, and especially my 
young son, seeing CARNIVAL. 
His being exposed to a monster 
like Louis, even on film, is a 
disturbing idea to me, because I 
believe that in real life, people 
like Louis should be dispatched. 

I feel like saying to him and his 
kind. ‘You can’t be here any 
more: you can’t be with the rest 
of us.’ Unfortunately, the Louis¬ 
es of this world arc out there, 
and probably will be for a long 
time to come.” 


49 
















CfiOur film is very cerebral,” 
Meltzer. “There’s virtually no 
blood. It does have scares in 
it, but...it’s not your typical 
slasher type of horror movie." 



Miller's clown takes the role of the original's Dark Man. Below: Bobbie Phillips 
as the haunted Alex Grant, recreating the original's notorious bathtub scene. 



figure in clown’s makeup who 
keeps dogging her at every turn. 

“One thing about the first 
film.” noted Soby. “was the fact 
that you really didn’t know any¬ 
thing about Mary Henry, except 
that she was a cold person. 
Here, we’ve definitely given 
her counterpart more levels to 
work and deal with. Alex is 
tough, but we know why she’s 
tough. When people like Alex 
experience trauma at a young 
age, they become hardened. I 
don’t mean hardened in the 
sense of cold, the way Mary 
Henry was cold, but tough and 
hardened and very protective of 
the ones she loves, like her sis¬ 
ter, and the memory of hcr- 
mother. To put it simply, we’ve 
updated this story to include 
some pretty heavy contempo¬ 
rary issues.” 

The updating was accom¬ 
plished by a 32-year-old film 
auteur named Adam Grossman. 
Fresh from directing SOME¬ 
TIMES THEY COME BACK 
AGAIN, and co-authoring 
SOMETIMES THEY COME 
BACK. FOR MORE, (both for 
Trimark) Grossman is the direc¬ 
tor and scriptwriter for the new 
CARNIVAL OF SOULS. 

“The two films are really not 
alike at all,” said Grossman. 
“The only thing that remains the 
same is the central idea: it’s the 
story of a woman who gets into 
a car accident, survives it, tries 
to get back to her normal life, 
but is haunted by these horrible 
visions until she realizes that 
she has been dead the whole 
time. That’s the only way the 
two movies are similar. Every¬ 
thing else in our CARNIVAL, is 
completely new. 

“I’ve also tried to increase 
the feeling of dread that the first 
movie generated. My favorite 
scary movies, and 1 think Wes 
Craven would agree with this, 
are the ones that don’t necessar¬ 
ily put the slash and gore across 
the screen, but put the fear in¬ 
side your mind." 

“Our film,” added Michael 
Meltzer, “is very cerebral. 
There’s virtually no blood. It 
docs have scares to it, but, as 
Adam says, it’s not your typical 
slasher type of horror .movie 
where you see heads falling off, 
or zombies walking. We do 
have makeup effects that, hope¬ 
fully, will startle the audience, 
and give them the thrills and the 


chills that there should be in a 
suspense thriller, but it is defi¬ 
nitely not your buckcts-of- 
hlood movie.” 

“We ve got all the visual 
elements of a thriller," noted 
Peter Soby, “we’ve got the 
stunts, the CGI effects, but a 
great deal of it is very subtle. 
You might see makeup on 
someone and it might just be 
enough that you notice what it 


is. A lot of our vision was to 
create something that was a 
little bit off-center. I think this 
is something that Adam has 
established with some of the 
camera angles; they're very 
much like some of the shots in 
VERTIGO or THE BIRDS, 
creepy, suspenseful, yet 
thought-provoking.” 

“Creating that creepy, 
what’s-happening-now? feel¬ 


ing,” said Grossman, “is not 
something that you just step on¬ 
to a soundstage and automati¬ 
cally start doing. It’s something 
that you have to grow into. 
That’s why I admire people like 
Alfred Hitchcock. After making 
so many suspenseful films, he 
knew exactly where his audi¬ 
ence was. He was able to put his 
finger on their fear button. But 
it’s not good enough to just imi¬ 
tate what Hitchcock did. You 
have to find your own way to 
the fear button. I’ve directed 
some thrillers before. I hope 
that with CARNIVAL, I’ve 
found my own way to tap into 
the audience's uneasiness." 

Soby and Meltzer apparently 
have enough confidence in 
Grossman’s abilities to start a 
mammoth advertising and mer¬ 
chandising program. “We’re 
planning a video re-release of 
the first film.” Soby said. “And 
maybe hitting some midnight 
markets and theaters with a dig¬ 
itally remastered version.” 

“We also plan," continued 
Meltzer. “to have a special edi¬ 
tion video that differentiates 
from some of those pirated 
videos that invariably get circu¬ 
lated. We’ll be having inter¬ 
views with some of the original 
people involved—and perhaps 
even talks with George Romero 
and Wes Craven, and we might 
even do a DVD. There was a 
comic book, graphic novel, and 
even trading cards that we hope 
to locate. 

“There’ll be a CD with the 
organ music. If things go well, 
we we might try some of these 
marketing approaches with our 
film. There’s going to be a lot of 
good CARNIVAL OF SOULS 
action out there!” 

“With all this talk about the 
two films being so different.” 
Soby chuckled, “You might ask 
‘why all the hoopla about the 
original?’ It’s inevitable that 
people arc going to be compar¬ 
ing our film to the Herk Har¬ 
vey version. But we embrace 
that, because we have a good 
film on our hands. When peo¬ 
ple are exposed to Herk’s 
CARNIVAL and then view 
ours, they will see that ours 
stands up to the comparison. I 
also believe the new CARNI¬ 
VAL OF SOULS will pay good 
homage to the original, which 
was, after all. our intention 
right from the start.” 


50 





SIDNEY BERGER 


The drama professor on his remake cameo and his 
unforgettable role in the ’62 b&w horror classic. 



By Mitch Persons 

The 1962 CARNIVAL OF 
SOULS is filled with memo¬ 
rable performances. There is of 
course, the extraordinary acting 
of Candace Hilligoss, who 
plays the lead, Mary Henry. 

Then there are the supporting 
players: The late director Herk 
Harvey does a marvelously 
creepy turn as the ubiquitous 
ghoul; Stanley Leavitt is out¬ 
standing as a stuffy pseudo-psy¬ 
chiatrist; Frances Feist, as Mary 
Henry's landlady, is a bundle of 
flustered nerves and motherly 
concern. Another performance, 
however, lingers in the minds of 
audiences almost as much as 
that of Candace Hilligoss: Sid¬ 
ney Berger’s portrayal of John Linden, 
Mary’s lecherous, slang-slinging neighbor. 

Berger has been the Director of Theater 
at the University of Houston, Texas, school 
of Theater for the past 27 years. Talking to 
this erudite, articulate man, it seems a mar¬ 
vel that he ever landed the part of the li¬ 
bido-dominated Linden at all. 

“Well, I didn’t really land the role of 
John Linden,” said Berger. “In the early 
’60s, I was in graduate school at the Univer¬ 
sity of Kansas in Lawrence. There was a 
documentary and educational film studio 
nearby named Centron Films. Herk Harvey 
worked as a director there. I would do a turn 
as an actor for him from time to time. That’s 
how we got to know each other. Later, when 
Herk was casting CARNIVAL OF SOULS, 
he thought of me for the role of Linden.” 

Over the years, Berger’s interpretation 
of Linden has been called everything from 
“creepy" to “slimy.” “I tike the label that 
Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times 
came up with.” laughed Berger. “He said 
that my portrayal was ‘the definitive study 
of the nerd in lust.’” 

Whatever the labeling, in the four 
decades since CARNIVAL was first 
shown, Berger’s characterization has been 
the subject of some controversy. Rumor 
has it that Herk Harvey was dissatisfied 


with the part (though not with Berger’s per¬ 
formance.) Harvey was supposed to have 
been quoted as saying that if he had any¬ 
thing to do over again in the film, it would 
be to change John Linden into a more sym¬ 
pathetic individual. 

“I have no idea where that rumor came 
from,” Berger stated. “Herk and 1 spoke 
many, many times after the film was made, 
up until the years when he was, unfortu¬ 
nately, very ill, and he never mentioned any 
regret about the Linden character. If such a 
thing was in his mind, I think he would 
have told me without any problem, because 
he and I had a very good relationship. 

“However, if he had said something like 
that, I think I would have been able to un¬ 
derstand it. John Linden was sort of a one- 
dimensional, obnoxiously horny guy. I’m 
not patting myself on the back, but I found 
myself doing everything I could to give him 
as human a context as possible, to make 
him a little more believable. He was, after 
all, the second lead in the film. Perhaps 
Herk and 1 could have worked with his 
character a little more, and given him a bit 
more dimension than was seen on the 
screen. It probably would have helped the 
initial reaction to the movie. 

“The strange thing is, even with Linden 
being as flatly motivated as he was, people 


have consistently talked to me 
about him. I’ve had show busi¬ 
ness professionals come up to 
me and ask, ’Didn't you play 
that nasty guy in that movie 
about the dead girl who didn't 
know she was dead?’ 

“When I played Linden, it 
never occurred to me that CAR¬ 
NIVAL would last beyond its 
initial showings; none of the 
people involved thought that it 
had any kind of future. 
The life the film has tak¬ 
en on since then is ab¬ 
solutely mind-boggling 
to me. It’s this obscure, 
small, black-and-white 
movie, and people just 
adore it. I have no idea, 
to this moment, as to 
why it has the effect it's had. 

"CARNIVAL had such a long life that in 
1990, we did a re-screening of it in the town 
where it was filmed, Lawrence, Kansas. 
Candace [Hilligoss] came, and I was there. 
We were about the only ones left. A number 
of the other people had passed away during 
the intervening years, but People magazine 
showed up, and they asked us if we would 
go to the various locations in Lawrence 
where we shot some of the film, and re-do 
those scenes for their cameras. We did it, 
and it was spooky! 

“The really spooky thing, though, was 
playing a small part in Wes Craven’s re¬ 
make. One day [producer] Peter Soby 
called me and asked whether I would be 
willing to come out to L. A. and do a cameo. 
I didn't know there was going to be a re¬ 
make, but once I found out, I thought it 
would be a hoot to be in it. I played the role 
of an L.A. cop. The scene was the one in 
which they pull the car out of the water with 
the girl’s body still in it. That was the scene 
I remember most from the original film, and 
I was suddenly seeing something alive that 
I thought was history some 40 years ago. 
There it was, happening again right in front 
of me, and I was playing someone else from 
a totally different perspective. Even though 

continued on page 60 


51 




























Ed Naha makes 
genre parody an art. 



Hillary Tuck, Barbara Alyn Woods and Thomas Dekker (ace the ‘Killer Carrot.” 


By Dan Scapperotti 

Abandoned army barracks in 
Calgary, Canada have been con- 
verted into a pair of sound 
stages and production offices 
for Disney Television’s version 
of the 1989 hit film HONEY. I 
SHRUNK THE KIDS. Peter 
Scolari steps into the shoes 
filled theatrically by Rick 
Moranis as wacky scientist 
Wayne Szalinski, a genius 
whose wild inventions often 
have unexpected, and undcsired 
side effects. Joining Scolari as 
wife Diane, is genre veteran 
Barbara Alyn Woods. Rounding 
out the Szalinski clan are 
daughter Amy, played by 
Hillary Tuck, and Thomas 
Dekker as son Nick. 

An addition to the cast in the 
second season is George Buza 
who had played Doubar on 
THE ADVENTURES OF SIN- 
BAD. Although he grew up in 
Cleveland, Doubar is a Canadi¬ 
an citizen. The 6’4" actor was 
cast as Jake McKenna, the 
town's police chief and fre¬ 
quently the victim of Wayne's 
antics. 

The South African-based 
ADVENTURES OF SINBAD 


had just been renewed for a 
third season and creator Ed Na¬ 
ha was thrilled. But suddenly 
the magic carpet was pulled out 
from under him when a corpo¬ 
rate takeover reversed the deci¬ 
sion and SINBAD bit the dust. 
The Fates, however, smiled on 
Naha when he received a call 
from Jonathan Hackett, a pro¬ 
ducer on Sinbad’s first season 
now attached to HONEY, I 
SHRUNK THE KIDS. The pro¬ 
ducer explained that plans were 
being laid to make some 
changes to the show for its sec¬ 
ond season. The tone of the 


show would change to include 
more elements of science fic¬ 
tion and fantasy. 

Naha, who had co-written 
the screenplay for the original 
film seemed to be heading for a 
reunion with his characters. He 
met with Leslie Belzberg who, 
along with John Landis, acts as 
executive producer for the 
show, and producer Bert 
Swartz. “Once they got over the 
shock of seeing me with my 
pony tail and SOUTH PARK t- 
shirt we hit it off,” said Naha. 

A fan of classic slapstick 
comedy, Naha has tried to bring 


that level of humor to the new 
season. “Peter Scolari is just an 
amazing physical comedian," 
said Naha. “I love physical 
comedy, the Laurel and Hardy 
and Hal Roach stuff, and he 
loves Buster Keaton. So what 
we tried to do this year was to 
change the show into an hour 
comedy The show's first season 
was mostly situation comedy. 
There wasn't a heck of a lot of 
action. It skewed more towards 
verbal humor. This year we just 
opened it up. It’s a lot more ki¬ 
netic. It’s a lot crazier.” 

The producers felt that the 
first season, although an hour- 
long show, still played like a 
half-hour program. For the sec¬ 
ond season they wanted it to 
play like a mini-movie. Ex¬ 
plaining the structure the new 
season would follow Naha not¬ 
ed. “You have a sense of mo¬ 
mentum where the verbal, the 
physical humor and the science 
fiction fantasy plot lines are all 
intertwined. They all move for¬ 
ward. The biggest challenge is 
to keep things moving. We are 
the only hour-long comedy ad¬ 
venture series in syndication. 
Once you boost up the action 
and gel the plot up and running 


Series co-executive producer and writing staff supervisor Ed Naha with Peter 
Scolari, who plays madcap inventor Wayne Szalinski In the movie spin-off. 



52 

















































Naha infused the sitcom with action. 


then you're moving at a gallop. 
All the cast members have real¬ 
ly been up for it.” 

This year's season opener, 
“Honey, It’s Quarkzilla,” had 
Wayne, under pressure from 
his boss to create a formula for 
growing giant vegetables, acci¬ 
dentally bringing forth a race 
of carnivorous carrots, toma¬ 
toes and other delectable veg¬ 
gies with a bite. Unfortunately, 
the family pet dog, Quark, is 
also introduced to the formula. 
“It’s almost like our homage to 
Toho films of the ‘60s and 
’50s,” said Naha. “The pet dog 
accidentally eats some of these 
giant vegetables and becomes 
Quarkzilla. It’s a guy in a suit 
like the original Toho things 
were.” 

Dinosaurs, flying men, 
threats from outer space and 
even a good old-fashioned 
slasher film villain are on tap 
for other shows this season. “In 
our Halloween show called 
‘Honey, Let’s Trick or Treat.*” 
which Stuart Gordon directed,” 
Naha explained, “we have ur¬ 
ban legends brought to life. So 
we have alligators in sewers and 
we have Michael Berryman 
from THE HILLS HAVE 




Disney extends the franchise with a 
3-D theme park attraction at EPCOT. 


Eric Idle as Dr. Nigel Charming with Nick Szalinski (Robert Oliver)), replicating 
thousands of mice for his snake Gigabyte. Disneyland opened the film last year. 


By Ross Plesset 

The mythology of HONEY, I 
SHRUNK THE KIDS has been 
applied to yet another medium: 
HONEY I SHRUNK THE AU¬ 
DIENCE, a special venue 3-D 
film for Disney’s theme parks. 
The show is set in Wayne Sza- 
1 insky’s laboratory were his far- 
out inventions go awry; a mouse 
is replicated thousands of times, 
Szalinsky goes out of control in 
a hover pod and of course the 
audience shrinks. 

Although the film premiered 
at EPCOT in 1994 and Disney¬ 
land in 1998, pre-production 
started before HONEY, I BLEW 
UP THE KID! (1992) was re¬ 
leased. “It was time to create a 
new 3-D show for Kodak and we 
came up with a huge list of con¬ 
cepts,” recalled Tom Fitzgerald 
of Walt Disney Imaginccring. 
“When we reviewed them with 
Michael [Eisner], there was one 
that stood out amongst all the 
others. What sold it was the title: 
HONEY, I SHRUNK THE AU¬ 
DIENCE. Anybody who we said 
that title to smiled and react¬ 
ed...Being able to build off of our 
mythologies is very important to 
us. Our shows are very short and 
when the audience already 
knows the characters and knows 
what might happen to them, it re¬ 
duces exposition time." 

Before they got the green 
light from Eisner, the Walt Dis¬ 
ney Imagineers had to convince 
him with test footage that the 
audience would believe they 
had shrunk. 


The film re-united the cast of 
HONEY, 1 BLEW UP THE 
KID! which was not without its 
problems. “We only had Rick 
Moranis for two days and the 
shoot was about two weeks," 
explained director Randal Kleis- 
er. “That’s when I got the idea of 
having him be miniaturized on 
his hover pod, which was most¬ 
ly CGI with his voice over it. 
The only times he worked was 
standing in the hover pod in 
front of a blue screen, looking 
into the theater with a magnify¬ 
ing glass and coming down the 
ramp at the end." 

Audiences arc reacting 
strongly to the 3-D gags. Ar¬ 
guably, they are comparable to 
MAGIC JOURNEYS, one of 
Disney’s best 3-D films. 


Besides making effective use 
of 3-D, HONEY, I SHRUNK 
THE AUDIENCE has many 
physical effects. At one point 
thousands of mice seemingly 
flood out of the screen and brush 
the audience’s legs. Show writer 
Steven Spiegel explained: 
“MUPPET-VISION 3-D had 
come out and we got great re¬ 
sponses from the audience get¬ 
ting wet in it. We thought ’How 
can we push that a little farther?’ 
That’s what led us to think of the 
mice effect in the theater. ‘Hon¬ 
ey’ was the first time we invad¬ 
ed [guests] personal space be¬ 
yond just getting them wet.” 

This fall HONEY, I 
SHRUNK THE KIDS gets im¬ 
plemented in still another medi¬ 
um: a dark ride at EPCOT. 



53 





































BARBARA ALYN WOODS 

Savoring her role as an action adventure heroine. 



By Dan Scapperotti 

Genre vet Barbara Alyn Woods likes the 
new action-adventure direction of HONEY, 

[ SHRUNK THE KIDS, in one second sea¬ 
son show. Woods does an Indiana Jones- 
type stunt, diving onto a truck from a mov¬ 
ing bicycle. In another she plays a warrior 
princess doing battle with a slasher killer. 
Noted Woods on the set, "HONEY, 1 
SHRUNK THE KIDS is fun because 1 get 
to play so many different roles. 

In 1990 Woods made her feature film 
debut in a trio of genre films: REPOS¬ 
SESSED. CIRCUITRY MAN and TER¬ 
ROR WITHIN II. Earlier TV roles includ¬ 
ed a guest shot on STAR I REK: THE 
NEXT GENERATION. “I played Kareen 
Briannon who fell in love with Data," said 
Woods of her STAR TREK experience. 

“It was my first LA professional gig and 
maybe one of my favorites of all time. It 
was mv first interaction with ‘real actors. 

I was thrilled and after the first day I knew 
that I wanted to do this for a long, long 
time. It was very exciting." 

When Woods landed the plum role ot 
Diane Szalinski in Disney’s television 
series HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS 
she moved to Canada where the show is 
filmed. "I’ll live in Canada as long as the 
show's running," she said. "Hillary Tuck, 
who plays mv daughter, and I have a house 
together. A beautiful hundred-year-old 
house and we re shacked up together. 

Diane is no sitcom mom from the '50s, 
or even your typical Disney housewife and 
mother. She is a self-contained little dy¬ 
namo who not only holds an outside job and 
manages household affairs, but must run in¬ 
terference for the occasional disastrous ef¬ 
fects of husband Wayne’s inventions. She is 
also a woman with sexual needs as evi¬ 
denced in the first show of the new season 
where she has to remind Wayne, who is try¬ 
ing to reverse a formula that has produced a 
strain of carnivorous vegetables, that that 
night they were scheduled for some bed¬ 
room activities. 

As an actress. Woods main concern is 
that her character is more complex than the 


Woods in action, dressed-up like you-know-who for the 
show's Halloween episode “Holographic Mayhem. 

run of the mill PV mom. As Diane Szalinski 
she has found a part that caters to her search 
for a multifaceted role. "It s ail about mak¬ 
ing a character well-rounded." she said, “ft s 
really important to me that the character has 
different shades and dimensions. I don’t 
want to say anything bad about the movie, 
so I won't* When I accepted the role it was 
understood that she has her own life. She s 
independent. She’s a working woman. She’s 
a lawyer. She has her career. She's more hu¬ 
man. She's almost superhuman. 

"I receive a lot of letters from women 
which is thrilling for me. They say. T hank 
you for depicting women this way. This is 
what I would love to achieve in my life.' I 
like to be a role model. 

“It’s definitely an actor's dream role. 
Every time we pick up a script we have no 
idea what to expect. Anything is possible. 
It’s really been quite an experience. 
They’ve definitely lived up to their promise 


to make her well-rounded. As long as 
that continues I'm very happy. 

The producers caught wind of Woods 
days as a night club singer back in 
Chicago and have incorporated that into 
one of the shows. "I was a torch singer in 
Honey, It’s Doomsday.' Like Michelle 
Pfeiffer in THE FABULOUS BAKER 
BOYS. I’m stretched out on top of a ba¬ 
by grand with a smoky background. I m 
wearing a red velvet dress with the mi¬ 
crophone. The whole deal. I sing ‘Hey 
Big Spender.' You wouldn’t believe how 
the storylines run together after a while. 
That was my method of delaying this 
character. General Bull Lytton Jennings, 
from destroying the world.” 

In “Honey. I'm Rooting for the Home 
Team,” Woods takes dancing lessons. “I 
was a belly dancer, she said. I took 
lessons from a world famous belly 
dancer, ft was the episode that Peter Sco- 
lari directed which was about our son 
Nick’s antics on the local kid's baseball 
team. It was just something that Diane 
decides to do in her free time, take belly 
dancing lessons. Then there is a little 
recital at the end." 

In the show's Halloween episode, “Honey, 
Let's Trick or Treat," directed by Stuart Gor¬ 
don, Woods gets to take a turn as a Warrior 
Princess. “Diane chooses to dress up as Xena 
because it’s Halloween,” said Woods. The 
Szalinski Scan-O-Caster (pat. pending) is an¬ 
other of Wayne's hairbrained inventions de¬ 
signed to scan stories and project them as 4D 
images. Diane thinks the idea too scary and 
Wayne locks the device away. Unfortunately, 
it scans the Big Book of Urban Myths and 
soon the town is invaded by everything from 
a giant alligator in the sewers to the legendary 
killer with a hooked hand. 

“I learned how to broad sword," Woods 
said proudly. “I get to tight Michael Berry¬ 
man [THE HILLS HAVE EYESj which is a 
thrill. I’m a big fan of his. I had hours of 
training and the two of us really, really went 
at it. We had no doubles and we were actu¬ 
ally sword fighting. It was a lot ot fun. 1 had 
a broad sword and he had a hook. It was 
pretty thrilling. 


54 















n 




EYES. He plays a guy with a 
hook for a hand that stalks 
lovers lane. In another show we 
have a take off on the asteroid 
going to hit the earth movies. 

“We have a spoof of the old 
rocketman Republic serials 
where Wayne decides he is go¬ 
ing to emulate his childhood 
hero Captain Rocket. So, to 
combat crime, he builds himself 
a costume that doesn't always 
work right all of the time. We’re 
doing things that are fun and 
goofy. ” 

Naha was given the title co¬ 
executive producer, but he is al¬ 
so the head writer for the show. 
Among his writing staff is Craig 
Volk who had worked on SIN- 
BAD. Naha himself has penned 
three of the first 12 episodes in¬ 
cluding “Honey, It's Quarkzil- 
la,” “Honey, I'm King of the 
Rocket Guys" and “Honey, It’s 
Doomsday.” 

The misadventures of the 
Szalinski clan call for an array 
of gadgets that Wayne has tin¬ 
kered together. Among these 
are the classic Shrink-ray 
which is still operable, and 
size does count; the Neuron 
Nudger allows people to share 
memories; The Felon Repellcr 
and Accident Neutralizer, 
F.R.A.N. for short is an artifi¬ 
cial intelligence home security 
device that develops a love for 
it's inventor, Wayne. One can 
bounce back in time with the 
Time Hopper. One drawback. 
If you stay too long you turn 
to stone and explode. The 
Thinky Ring was invented to 
increase the wearer's brain 
power, unfortunately it also 
gives them “an overwhelming 
sense of superiority, arro¬ 
gance, and a contempt for hu¬ 
mankind." 

The Gizmo Shop is responsi¬ 
ble for turning the script's daffy 
devices into reality, or at least 
the semblance of something that 
looks like it might work. The 
eight full time members of the 
shop, a team headed by coordi¬ 


from the studio. You have a 
small town feel when we go for 
exterior shots. The production 
design is tremendous. They've 
now created the front and back 
of the Szalinski house on a 
sound stage. They’ve taken over 
part of the back lot, as well as a 
real house that serves as the 
McKenna's home.” Post pro¬ 
duction and visual effects for 


nator Doug Blackie, have been 
designated the “Gizmo Guys.” 
The shop is a jumhle of metal 
and wires, junk, actually, that 
can be tinkered into a Wayne 
Szalinski invention. 

“We have a lot of great giz¬ 
mos this year,” said Naha. 
“We're trying to get back to the 
tone of the original film and 
have new inventions every 
week." 

For the last two years on 
SIN BAD Naha has been able to 
play with Ray Harryhausen and 
Errol Flynn type action adven¬ 
tures with traces of verbal hu¬ 
mor. Now he is able to deal 
with physical humor as well, 
thanks to Peter Scolari’s mas¬ 
tery of that craft. “I can't say 
enough about Peter," said Naha. 
“This guy is just remarkable. 
Because he's so good at verbal 
humor and instinctively gets the 
physical humor, the most fun 
I’m having this year is trying to 
design outrageous sight gags 
that are part of the story." 

Producer Leslie Belzberg is 
from Calgary and realized the 
benefits of filming in the Alber¬ 
ta Province where LONESOME 
DOVE was shot. “There's a lot 
of interesting scenery there,” 
said Naha. “For instance, 
in the prehistoric episode 
we needed a bog pit. Our pro¬ 
duction designer found one 
within commuting distance 


The Szalinskls and police chief foil George Buza win the bout In second 
season's “Honey, I'm Wrestling With A Problem," syndicated in major markets. 


Thomas Dekker as Nick Szalinski in Naha's second season spoof of LITTLE 
SHOP OF HORRORS, infusing the series with more action and special effects. 


the series, however, are done in 
California and the writers have 
their offices there so they can 
screen dailies. 

For the ardent science fiction 
fans Naha has peppered the 
episodes with references to 
genre icons. In “Honey, It’s 
Doomsday” he pays homage to 
those asteroid movies of last 
summer when Wayne travels to 
a threatening planetoid. “He has 
sort of a time machine,” said 
Naha, “so he modifies the time 
machine and puts the guts of it 
into a phone booth and that’s 
his, for lack of a better word, 
his Star Trckian transporter de¬ 
vice. So on the one hand we get 
to do a little wink at STAR 
TREK and on the other we get 
to wink at DR. WHO and the 
Tardis. There are enough refer¬ 
ences in the show that if you’re 
into science fiction and fantasy 
you’re going to pick up on it. In 
one script when Wayne sees the 
T Rex his exclamation is ‘Holy 
Harry hausen!*” 


CREATOR ED NAHA 

“I love physical comedy, the Laurel and Hardy 
and Hal Roach stuff and [Peter Scolari] 
loves Buster Keaton... .This year we just 
opened it up. It’s a lot more kinetic.” 

















Crooner James Darren on finding new life 
as a holographic hit on the final frontier. 



Darren as Fontaine, a sentient holosulte entertainer on the station, who debuted In 
last season's "His Way," dispensing advice to lovelorn Odo (Rene Auberjonois). 


By Anna L. Kaplan 

Hard at work on set film¬ 
ing the episode “It’s Only a 
Paper Moon,’* James Darren 
talked about the beginning of 
his relationship with DS9. 

He laughed, “When I was 
first asked about playing a 
character on DEEP SPACE 
NINE, when they told me the 
character was a singer, l told 
them I didn’t want to do it. 

It’s kind of on the nose. 1 
didn’t want to meet with the 
producers. Then they asked 
me if I would at least have 
the courtesy to read the 
script, and 1 did. It was such 
a wonderful script that I was 
begging them to do it. Thank 
God, they still wanted me. 
The character is a terrific idea, 
especially in contrast to this at¬ 
mosphere here, and to all the 
other characters, the aliens, I 
call them. It’s been fun." 

Darren’s character, Vic 
Fontaine, was first introduced 
in the sixth season episode “His 
Way,” written by executive pro¬ 
ducer Ira Behr and co-executive 
producer Hans Beimlcr. Vic is a 
self-aware, holographic singer 
whose program parallels Las 
Vegas in the 1960’s. During 
“His Way,” Vic helped Odo 
(Rene Auberjonois) express his 
love for Kira (Nana Visitor). 

Darren enjoyed everything 
about “His Way ” He noted, “I 
think that show had magic. All 
those things that Ira and Hans 


wrote, ‘Hi, doll-face,’ all these 
expressions that Vic uses, some 
of them that are typically fifties, 
sixties expressions. They arc so 
cool to say, so great.” 

He continued, “I’ve got to 
say that the writing on this show 
is really outstanding, for me in 
particular. When I talked to Ira 
Behr and Hans Beimler, and 
they said. ‘You know you did a 
really wonderful job in the 
show,’ I said, ‘Without those 
terrific words to say, I could 
never have done it,’ because 
they write this character so 
beautifully. It makes my job 
easy. It's a lot of fun." 

barren explained that al¬ 
though he does not like watch¬ 
ing himself, he viewed “His 


Way” more than once. He said, 
“I liked the show so much I had 
to watch it." 

Darren singled out the per¬ 
formance of Rene Auberjonois 
for praises. “Odo at the piano 
was brilliant,” said Darren. 
“You get something from this 
character that wears this mask, 
this face that is expressionless, 
[which| is very, very difficult. I 
just felt everything he would be 
feeling when I was doing the 
scenes with him. I don’t know 
how he does it. I know he's a 
wonderful actor, and that’s one 
of the ways he does it. It sure 
comes through." 

Vic appeared in short se¬ 
quences in a number of other 
episodes, including the sixth 


season finale, “Tears of the 
Prophets,” the seventh sea¬ 
son opener, “Images in the 
Sand,” and “The Siege of 
AR-558.” Darren explained, 
“The other three that l have 
done were just shorter ap¬ 
pearances, situations where 
someone wanted to hear a 
song, for particular reasons, 
that reminded them of what¬ 
ever. Not really involved 
much in the storyline.” 

“The Siege of AR-558” 
led into “It’s Only a Paper 
Moon,” in which Vic helped 
Nog (Aron Eisenberg) deal 
with the loss of a leg in com¬ 
bat. Said Darren, “The 
downside to doing an 
episode like ‘His Way’ is try¬ 
ing to at least equal it or top 
it. Hopefully this will be as 
good. It’s different, absolutely. I 
really feel it in this show, the re¬ 
lationship of Nog and Vic. A lot 
of it depends on the rapport you 
have with the actor you arc 
working with. With Rene I had 
great rapport, and I have that 
with Aron also. Aron is a char¬ 
acter. He’s a little ball of fire, I 
call him. He’s a good actor, 
very good.” 

Darren continued, “We have 
Anson Williams directing this 
particular episode. I was direct¬ 
ing MELROSE PLACE and 
9(1210, and Anson was prep- 
ping, and vice versa. We have 
known each other for awhile 
now, and it’s fun working with 
him. I always like having an ac- 


56 













show. 

The actor-singer talked 
about the importance of DEEP 
SPACE NINE to him. Darren 
recalled, “I hadn't acted in a 
long time. I had been directing 
for 11 years, and I just didn't 
really care about getting back 
into it. But Ira Behr changed 
my life. Not only am I acting, 
but I am doing singing dates 
again. Once I did ‘His Way' Ira 
said, ‘You’ve got to start 
singing again.’ I said, ‘Really?’ 
I guess I am easily convinced. I 
called my agency and said, 
‘You know, I want to start 
singing again.’ They 
said, ‘What brought 
this on?’ I said, ‘Ira 
Behr, blame him.' They 
started getting me 
dates. I am going to 
work Atlantic City, and 
Vegas. It's great. It’s al¬ 
most like discovering 
my singing life all over 
again, and the era when 
I was performing back 
in the early sixties, and 
seventies, and eighties. 
What happened when I 
did ‘His Way' was that I had so 
much fun that it just brought 
back the memories of the fun I 
had when I was working Vegas, 
when I was working with Bud¬ 
dy Hackett, from 1970 to 1982. 
We worked together for 12 
years, and I really had a good 
time. I didn't realize how much 
fun 1 had as a singer. Not hav¬ 
ing done it for 11 years, I had 
forgotten the pleasure of it. 
I’ve been reliving that, for 
sure. 

“I’m pretty busy. But I am 
busy doing something different, 
as opposed to continuing to di¬ 
rect. It's a change. It’s really 
nice. I like that. To me, to get 
out there and sing is just having 
a good time. When you direct, 
you have a lot of responsibility. 

I am just going to go out and 
work for four hours a day and 
have a good time. I'm starting a 
whole new life.” 


Fontaine returned several times this season to delight the crew of DS9 
(above), including “It’s Only A Paper Moon” (right) with Clrroc Lofton. 


tor director. I trust it more, be¬ 
cause I know they watch out for 
the actor.” 

Although Darren did not fol¬ 
low DEEP SPACE NINE before 
being cast as Vic, he had no 
trouble meshing with all the 
complex humans and aliens on 
the show. He said, “That wasn’t 
really difficult. You watch the 
show a couple of times, and you 
pick up on it pretty quickly. You 
have to relate to the people, get 
to know them. When I look at 
Odo, I can relate to him as a 
person, not this bubblegum 

guy.” 

Darren, of course, shared the 
television screen with STAR 
TREK's Captain Kirk's alter 
ego William Shatncr while do¬ 
ing T.J. HOOKER (1983-86), in 
which Darren played James 
Corrigan. “I had a really good 
time with him, actually,” said 
Darrrcn of his work with Shat- 


ner. “I know that sometimes 
people don’t. T.J. HOOKER 
had been on for about six 
months when 1 came onto the 
show, and we never had any 
kind of problems. There were 
small situations, but nothing 
that couldn't be resolved. I 
guess it’s how you approach it. 1 
just stood my ground, so to 
speak, if I needed to. 

“We never hung out, but we 
did get along really well and I 
do like him. When the show 
was ending, and we didn’t 
know whether we were picked 
up for the next season, Bill 
gave me a note. It said, ‘Dear 
Jimmy, I’ll miss you most of 
all.'That really touched me. 1 
thought that was really a sweet 
thing. 1 show what I feel about 
people. I show my emotions. 
Not all people do. I never real¬ 
ized that Bill liked me that 
much. That was a nice, sweet 


thing. I did have a good time. 
We had a lot of laughs on the 
show. 1 see Bill once in awhile, 
and it's always nice to see 
him.” 

Darren has enjoyed a long 
career as an actor, singer, and 
director. He is best known to 
genre films from the television 
show THE TIME TUNNEL 
(1966), in which he played Dr. 
Tony Newman. His movie cred- 
its include DIAMOND 
HEAD(1962), THE GUNS 
OF NAVARONE (1961), as 
well as G1DGET (1959) and its 
two sequels. 


Darren first directed an 
episode of T.J. HOOKER, go¬ 
ing on to direct many television 
dramas, from HUNTER, 
STINGRAY, to BEVERLY 
HILLS 90210, and MELROSE 
PLACE. Darren’s singing ca¬ 
reer has spanned many decades. 
Like Vic Fontaine, he per¬ 
formed for years in Las Vegas. 
His biggest hit was “Goodbye 
Cruel World” which he has not 
yet sung on DEEP SPACE 
NINE. The writer/producers 
have chosen many ballads and 
old standards for Vic to sing. 
Any episode heavily featuring 
the character is, as Hans Beim- 
ler has called it, a DEEP SPACE 
NINE musical. 

After “It’s Only a Paper 
Moon," Darren expected to re¬ 
turn to DS9. He said, “I think I 
have another two to do, with the 
ending maybe three.” He said it 
would be fun to be in the last 


JAMES DARREN, ACTOR 

HDS9 changed my life. Not only am I acting, 
but I’m doing singing dates again. I’m going to 
work Atlantic City and Vegas. Doing ‘His Way’ 
brought back memories of the fun I had.” 


57 
















BlUffl MASK 

Bizarre fantasy action, Hong Kong style. 



By Craig Reid 

A man explodes out of a 
bloom of fire, and flies toward 
us at 200 mph. A message flash¬ 
es, “This person has been 
erased.” Moments ago, this un¬ 
armed man sporting racing gog¬ 
gles was surrounded by heavily 
armed government troops who 
had orders to kill him. Only 
thing is, how can you slop a hu¬ 
man tornado, that moves like an 
F-14, strikes with the force of a 
jackhammer and looks like Ka- 
to from GREEN HOR¬ 



NET? Sounds bizarre? Expect nothing 
less from the father of fant-Asia, producer 
Tsui Hark. With his film BLACK MASK, 
he has once again weaved his magic web of 
intrigue. But this time, the main spinner is 
really director Daniel Lee. Artisan Enter¬ 
tainment gives the film, starring Jet Li, a 
U.S. debut April 23. 

If Li in the film reminds you of Bruce 
Lee as Kato from THE GREEN HORNET, 
it’s intentional. “We all like Bruce Lee," 
said the director, who worked on the script 
for six months with Hark. “I've heard Tsui 
wrote the script five years before any of his 
Wong Fei Hung films (ONCE UPON A 
TIME IN CHINA; 1991). There has been 
more than 10 scriptwriters and five direc¬ 
tors attached to the project.” 

“We found that the image of Kato looked 
more convincing and suitable for the Orien¬ 
tal audience but the image of the black 
mask is not that wild. In fact, when you see 
the close-up on the mask, it is wrinkled like 
a fan. Tsui invented the mask's design from 
a dream he had about an opening fan.” 

Jet Li, who recently made his American 
debut in LETHAL WEAPON 4 , stars as the 


Black Mask. He has also starred in count¬ 
less far-out Hong Kong fant-Asia films like 
TAI CHI MASTER and the award-winning 
FONG SAI YUK. He’s a man who was part 
of the 701 Squad, an elite group of Chinese 
assassins who were rendered void of physi¬ 
cal and emotional pain when they were sub¬ 
jected to brain surgery. 

As the Black Mask battles the 701 squad 
itself, in an attempt to get out, internal bat¬ 
tles rage over his inability to experience 
love for his new colleague Tracy (Karen 
Mok; GOD OF COOKERY) and former 
701-er, the black-leathered, seductive 
S&M-likc Yeuk-lan (Francoise Yip). 

Yip first appears in the film dressed in 
tight leather and chains, seducing a drug deal¬ 
er. At that critical moment, Yeuk-lan psychot- 
ically usurps his innards to paint the floor red. 
She next maniacally attacks Li with a series 
of flying, bicycle-like pumping front kicks. 
It’s a far cry from her character in 
Jackie Chan’s'RUMBLE IN THE BRONX. 

Noted Yip about the character’s depar¬ 
ture, “In that scene she dresses as a domina- 
trix lady because that is how she can get in 
to kill that guy [human flesh bun Anthony 
Wong]. But she’s an assassin. I really want¬ 
ed to do an action film and 1 knew of Jet. So 
when I was asked, I was there. People have 
a lot of different things inside them and to 
be able to do something like this character 
in a film is exciting because you have no 
consequences for doing it. So you can let 
loose in this type of film because you don’t 
have to worry that anything is going to hap¬ 
pen to you afterwards.” 

Based on a famous Hong Kong comic 
strip, BLACK MASK is a veritable cornu¬ 


copia of marvelous action set 
pieces, compliments of famed 
Hong Kong action director 
Yuen Woo Ping, who directed 
the films that made Jackie 
Chan, SNAKE IN THE EA- 
GLE’S SHADOW and 
DRUNKEN MASTER as well 
as Keanu Reeves in THE MA¬ 
TRIX. We arc introduced to the 
Black Mask as he ominously 
appears out of the misty rain 
parachuting down onto an as¬ 
sailant that is trying to kill his 
Inspector friend who precari¬ 
ously dangles from the top of a 
skyscraper. What Li does with a 
simple bedside lamp, one of 
those large wooden electric- 
wire spools and a downed power line bog¬ 
gles the brain. Not only bullets fly but so do 
giant wrecking balls, compact discs and 
bodies, due to high wire stunts gone awry. 

Assuming the identity of mild-mannered 
librarian Tsui Shik, The Black Mask es¬ 
capes from 701’s headquarters in mainland 
China and attempts to live a normal life in 
Hong Kong. But under the leadership of 
fearless leader Commander Hung, 701 is 
bent on conquering Hong Kong by destroy¬ 
ing the police force and taking over the 
drug trade. Only Black Mask has the fight¬ 
ing abilities to help Inspector Shck (Lau 
Ching Wan; A HERO NEVER DIES) pre¬ 
vent Hong Kong's demise. 

Although Harks films commonly have a 
romantic theme, Lee contends that BLACK 
MASK is not a romance. “I know Tsui has a 
romantic edge to his films but this film is 
about the dark side of human beings. We’ve 
scientifically converted this man into a ver¬ 
sion of a human being without pain. If you 
find that you have no pain, that’s trouble¬ 
some. So it’s a story about a man trying to 
get that feeling of pain. Pain symbolizes the 
human condition.” 

Before becoming a director, Lee worked 
in television until he became an assistant di¬ 
rector on the period piece action drama 
THE ROMANCE OF THE SWORD AND 
BOOK under Ann Hui, an important figure 
in Hong Kong cinema and one of the few 
women directors (SWORDSMAN) in the 
postage stamp colony. He also served as an 
art director on ZODIAC KILLERS and 
Brigette Lin’s STARRY NIGHT. 

Lee recalls how he got the chance to 

continurd on page 61 


58 












Artisan Entertainment is releasing a dubbed version of BLACK MASK, a Hong 
Kong fantasy starring Jet U (LETHAL WEAPON 4) as an invincible warrior. 


FILM RATINGS 

• ••• Musi see 

• •t Excellent 

*• Good 

• Mediocre 
Fodder for MST-3K 

Black M ask 

Ihrrvt**r; llinirl l« Vrlt^in I nlrrtjmmrnl, 4 99, 

95 mint, k [Itihhrd in I ti£li*h, WJih: Jri Li, 1 au 
C hiBU Man, karrn Framui* Yip, 

Once upon a time, in a certain 
country up North, a special combat 
team named "Squad 701 '* was formed. 
In this experiment, all team members 
were given brain surgery to remove 
their nerves. As a result, they can feel 
no pain, thus making Squad 701 a team 
of invincible warriors. TTiis experiment 
was finally considered a failure and all 
the members had to be destroyed. One 
of the members is the "Black Mask.” 

If you’re looking for the film that 
BATMAN & ROBIN should have 
been, a movie that the GREEN HOR¬ 
NET remake and THE MATRIX could 
be, then BLACK MASK, directed bv 
Daniel Lee (WHAT PRICE SUR 
V1VAL) and produced by Tsui Hark, is 
certain to quench your cinematic thirst. 

Cashing in on Jet l.i's Hollywood 
debut in LETHAL WEAPON 4. Arti¬ 
san Entertainment is releasing a 95 
minute. English-dubbed version of the 
1996 Tanl-Asia spectacle, la’s charac¬ 
ter Tsui Chik is a curious blend of 
Bond. Roger Moore’s THE SAINT, 
and above all. Bruce Lee’s Kato. In 
keeping with the secrel agent-ish sensi¬ 
bility. the soundtrack is a somewhat 
cheesy concert of SECRET AGENT 
MAN meets THE AVENGERS, no 
doubt 'Tsui’s nod to one of his favorite 
genres. Although the film marked a 
reconciliation between Jet and Tsui 
(after their bitter break-up three years 
ago), it was a perceptive decision to 
hand over the directing duties to Lee 
while Tsui’s input was limited to phone 
calls from the set of Van Damme’s 
DOUBLE TEAM in Italy. 

Before he was "the mask,” Chik 
was a member of the 701 squadron, an 
elite military force of medically en¬ 
hanced super-soldiers. Demoralized. 
Chik escapes the fold in mainland Chi¬ 
na to Hong Kong where he lives in 
engnito as an awkward librarian under 
the pseudo-protection of his newly 
found police friend Inspector Shek 
(Lau t hing Wan. THE EXECUTION¬ 
ERS). Chik attempts to rebuild his sen¬ 
sory deprivations in order to regain his 
long-lost emotions to experience love 
with his colleague Tracy (Karen Mok. 
CHINESE ODYSSEY), while simulta¬ 
neously realizing that the carefully or¬ 
chestrated effort to murder all of Hong 
Kong’s drug lords is the work of the 
701 squad. Their goal? Take over the 
New- Territories and tap into the lucra¬ 
tive drug market for funding. The inef¬ 
fective Shek is assigned to stop 701 but 
only Chik’s advanced pugilistic skills 
and bulletproof, steel-wrapped heart 
can save the day. 

Based on a famous Hong Kong 
comic strip, BLACK MASK serves up 
a genre plate chocked full of surrealis¬ 
tic acrobatic combat, "what the heck 


was that" death-defying stunts, Fran¬ 
cois Yip (RUMBLE IN THE BRONX) 
as 70l’s leather-clad, seductive 
“screw-urn” before you "kill-urn” 
dominatrix Yuek Ean. and Yuen Woo 
Ping's (MATRIX) far-out pugilistic 
ballet. Inside information? Andy 
Cheng, the assistant fight choreograph¬ 
er on CBS’ MARTIAL LAW (winner 
of the 190S Best New Show on TV 
award), was the stunt double for the 
evil Commander Hung. 

It is obvious why Tsui decided to 
make Lee his latest protege. Able to 
emulate Tsui's storytelling ability and 
visual style, Lee intelligently integrat¬ 
ed his previous art direction experience 
and martial art training to create a 
whole new- action appeal for a Tsui- 
produced film. Seeped in a green, 
melallic-hued visual palate and itozing 
with Jet Li's dark, flittering combative 
techniques, enhanced by Yuen Woo 
Ting's fantastical fighting creations, 
one quickly sees just how much influ¬ 
ence Yuen had on the Wachowski 
Brothers’ MATRIX. Consider BLACK 
MASK a preview of MATRIX which 
in reality was made two years prior. 

My Favorite Martian 

Dimior: Ihtaild Frtrir. Strreuplav: Shrrn Sumer. 
Deanna Ulivrr, bated Ihr TV ifHn i rrslrd h) 
|nhn L- Crern Dime*. I 99, 9} mint. F(i. ttilh: 
C hnvlrtphcr Llmd. Jr IT Disirli, IJifabrlh llurlt*. 
Darn I Hannah, HalLair Shawn. Rjn Wiliiito. 

This painfully botched retread of 
(he old television series actually has a 
handful of amusing elements, hut they 
are buried under an ocean of CGI ef¬ 
fects apparently aimed at turning the 
film into a kiddie version of I997's 
MEN IN BLACK. 

Most egregious is Uncle Martin’s 
new suit, a computer-generated charac¬ 
ter named Zoot (get it?) that cavorts 
about idiotically and unleashes a bar¬ 
rage of unfunny one-liners. Apparently, 
this is some corporate executive’s idea 
of an attempt to combine the zany per¬ 
sonality of Robin Williams’ genie in 
ALLADIN with the rubber reality of 
the titular goo in FLUBBER. At semi- 
regular intervals, Zoot can intrude on 
the story (without affecting it jn any 
way) and do some kind of routine, pre¬ 


sumably to wake up youngsters bored 
by the slow pace. 

The talented cast is mostly left try¬ 
ing to force laughs from material that 
just won’t yield many, but Hurley is 
quite good as a bubble-headed news- 
woman who barely understands the 
words she speaks on camera that are 
being fed to her through her headphone. 
Somewhat absurdly, she is supposed to 
be the daughter of Michael Lerner; her 
English accent is explained as the result 
of boarding school. The best gag by far 
involves Ray Walston in a supporting 
role as a government agent: he actually 
turns out to he playing his character 
from the original show, waiting to hop a 
ride back to Mars. • Sieve Hiudruwski 

Virtue 

DindaM»f1tfl^pnd«nr; * imrrilikura Margin 
Kilmi, 19V. 7ft nuns Not mini, Midi: t nnnir C'hnm- 
pjij’tir, Uun Milligan. Phillip R. Kurd, Jello Hiafra. 
Timitih* Uan.Hilliamf^itnon. 

What does one say about the low- 
rent version of this high-tech stuff? 
VI RTUE is shot in 16mm black-and- 
white, with the virtual reality se¬ 
quences in color, often digitally en¬ 
hanced. The film is full of perverse 
fantasies, mostly sexual in nature. The 
story is minimal at most. 'The heroine. 
Dundee (pronounced like the Korean 
car), goes in search of a virtual reality 
chip to replace her recently deceased 
during ejaculation, having pul a Saran 
Wrap-type dry cleaning bag over his 
head w hile jerking off next to Dundee 
in bed. (She had graciously offered her 
services, but he declined, presumably 
sensing she was half asleep.) 

Not for the squeamish, as its poster 
has well advised, VIRTUE is part Al¬ 
ice in Wonderland (as if the valley 
porno ring had gotten hold of it) and 
pan LIQUID SKY (1983). In a world 
where fruit has become as precious as 
gold. Dundee haunts underground 
clubs in search of a virtual man. 
Whom she chooses, an Elvis imper¬ 
sonator, is in fact a woman dressed as 
a man. imitating Elvis. Do we know 
what we really want? 

At 76 minutes, VIRTUE never 
bores, although it may never clarify 
what its intentions are. No holds 


barred when it comes to explicit fan¬ 
tasies, self-named director Camera 
Obscura went for it. She should be ap¬ 
plauded for her bravery, although ulti¬ 
mately I'm not sure what her point is. 
According to Obscura, in our future, 
virtual reality becomes what oxygen 
bars, heroin, Evian, television, or alco¬ 
hol are today. I was amused yet unaf¬ 
fected. • Sonya Bums 

TELEVISION 


Mystery Science Theater 

3000: SEASON TEN DEBUT 

Director: Kevin Murpht, Sci-F i (him nr I, 4 11/99, 
Sci-Fi ( haimrl. 4 II 99. 1 hn • inmmtrciih. With: 
Mil had J. Nr him* Hill I nrtirll.. Kenn Murpbv Man- 
Jo Frhi. J**cl llr*lg\nti r I rank t unmfT. 

After robots Crow (Corbett) and 
Tom Servo (Murphy) conduct a wet T- 
shirt contest for Mike (Nelson)—con¬ 
sisting of neatly folded tees in pans of 
water—the Satellite of Love begins 
experiencing multiple, life-threatening 
malfunctions. Down in Castle For¬ 
rester, mad scientist Pearl (Pehl) and 
her assistants Observer (Corbett) and 
Professor Bobo (Murphy) are at first 
totally uninterested in the mounting 
disaster, until Bobo points out that, if 
Mike and the 'bots die. "we’ll have no 
one to play with." Pearl rushes into ac¬ 
tion and makes the Observer send 
them the “skin-peelinglv bad" film 
SOULTAKER (199TJ). This low-bud¬ 
get saga, featuring Joe Estevez, as a su¬ 
pernatural being sent to steal the souls 
of five dopey teens, unspools while 
things get critical on the S.O.L. 

A mysterious ship saves Mike and 
company from certain death, and it 
turns out to be piloted by Joel Robin¬ 
son (Hodgson), the S.O.L. ’s original 
crewman and creator of Crow, Servo, 
Gypsy, and Cambot. After escaping 
five years earlier. Joel learned (hat the 
late Dr. Clayton Forrester had sabo¬ 
taged the ship to self-destruct after ten 
years. As Joel goes about repairing the 
ship, a soullaker appears in Castle For¬ 
rester: it turns out to be the deceased 
TV’s Frank (Conniff), Dr. Forrester’s 
old assistant. Of course, he’s yet to 
successfully take a single soul! Joel 
finishes his repairs but declines to take 
Mike back to Earth, saying that his 
years on the S.O.L. were the best of 
his life, and he doesn’t want to deprive 
Mike of that experience. Joel high¬ 
tails it when Frank sees him and de¬ 
clares, “Your mime's on my list!” As a 
consolation. Pearl lets Frank take 
Bob’s soul. 

The movie segments are very fun¬ 
ny; they have lots of fun at the expense 
of star Estevez ("It's just not death 
with dignity if there's an Estevez in 
the room," notes Crow) and co-star Vi¬ 
vian Schilling (“Tonya Harding is 
Scarlett O'Hara!” quips Servo). Still, 
more could have been done with the 
reunion theme during the host seg¬ 
ments, and it was disappointing that 
Joel didn't join Mike and the ‘hots in 
the theater even once. Sorely missed, 
loo. was Trace Beaulieu, who was not 
only ihe original voice of Crow bur al¬ 
so the zany Dr. Forrester (Pearl’s son). 

• • • Dan t '/irato 


59 

















BORDERLAND: 
“The Thin Red Line" is 
“Simply Irresistible” 

By Anthony P. Montesano 


THE THIN RED LINE (Fax 
2000, 170 min. R, 12/98) director Ter¬ 
rence Malick's return to filmmaking 
after a 20-year hiatus, is a spiritual 
tone poem which muses on man’s 
connection to God and nature as 
played across the backdrop of WW II 
Malick’s source material here is the 
James Jones novel of the same name, 
but the film could have been about 
any mass conflict and achieved the 
same effect. Malick is working at a 
deeper level, a level of raw emotion 
and transcendental spirituality. The 
voiceover narration, which appears to 
want to unravel the mind of God, pos¬ 
es such questions as: “Why does na¬ 
ture contend with itself?” The film 
ambitiously sets out not to offer an¬ 
swers but rather to invite the audience 
to find a resolution in themselves. 

Ostensibly, the film is about the 
battle of Guadalcanal, hut it could 
have been any battle in any war. The 
film doesn’t concern itself with a nar¬ 
rative plot but rather sets up its situa¬ 
tions and its characters as basic arche¬ 
types. The film is centered around the 
character of Private Win. who, when 
we meet him, is living in perfect har¬ 
mony in a Pacific paradise, after go¬ 
ing AWOL. Drawn back into battle, 
Witt quickly emerges as a Christ-like 
character who doesn’t fear death be¬ 
cause he knows there's something 
more beyond this life. At the death of 
his mother, he describes her us having 
seen “the Glory." We see this in the 
form of an angel who comes to guide 
his mother to the other side. 

A near magnificent achievement. 
THE THIN RED LINE works over 
the audience in rhythms. In the right 
stale of mind, you beat when it beats, 
you sway when it sways, much like 
meditation or prayer. The film re¬ 
ceived a much deserved seven Acade¬ 
my Award nominations including Best 
Picture, Director and Screenplay. 
Malick's tightrope walk always places 
the film in danger of being preten¬ 
tious, but never steps over the line. 
The bevy of name talent that has lent 
services to the film—including Nick 
Nolle, John Travolta, Sean Penn, John 
Cusack, George Clooney, and Woody 
Harrelson—can, at times be a distrac¬ 
tion, especially when the toIcs, as in 
the case of Clooney and Travolta, 
amount to nothing more than a one- 
minute cameo. My advice is to experi¬ 
ence this film alone, laic at night, in 
silence. Breathe in deeply and let it 
touch your soul. 

Begging comparison to the 1992 
Mexican import. LIKE WATER FOR 
CHOCOLATE, the stilled romantic 
comedy SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE 
(20th Century Fox, 9b min. PC-13, 
2/99) simply doesn't achieve the same 
sense of magic. 





THE THIN RED UNE (with. I to r. Ben Chaplin, John Cusack, and Jim Caviezel) 
is actually a spiritual tone poem musing on man s connection to God, 


Magic is ultimately what both 
films are about, the kind of magic that 
is ignited by love and passion, by 
emotions and social traditions, such as 
cooking. Both films center on young 
women who, through their cooking, 
have the power to affect those around 
them. In LIKE WATER FOR 
CHOCOLATE, this power is rooted in 
the metaphors of the culture and man¬ 
ifest themselves through (he passion 
of cooking made with love. The film 
is bathed in a golden hue and given its 
texture by the ancient beliefs and 
myths of its people. In SIMPLY IR¬ 
RESISTIBLE. an angel (in the form 
of a taxi driver) appears to Amanda 
(Sarah Michelle Gellar), a forlorn 
young woman who has inherited a 
failing restaurant from her recently 
deceased mother. The angel leaves be¬ 
hind a magical crab (yes, a crab) to as¬ 
sist Amanda in her cooking, which 
goes immediately from mediocre to 
magical. 

The two films share remarkable 
similarities, hut the nimble LIKE WA¬ 
TER FOR CHOCOLATE integrates 
the subtle and even comical nature of 
this magic into a wider belief struc¬ 
ture. Having no ethnic culture to rely 
on. SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE feels it 
has no choice hut to play these same 
moments broadly and hope for laughs. 

I have long held a theory that certain 
dialogue and actions can be more 
readily accepted by audiences when 
they occur in foreign language films. 
SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE seems to 
bear me out. That, however, does not 
excuse the silly, disjointed writing, 
heavy-handed direction, and card¬ 
board acting this film offers. In the 
hands of, say, a Francis Ford Coppola 
in his ONE FROM T HE 1IEARI 
days, this film might have at least 
been an interesting exercise in 
chiaroscuro. As it is. though, it's a 
waste of lime. Rem CHOCOLATE 
and see this done well. 


Little Voice 

fHmrfnr: Mark llrrmjn Sciffipb; : Mark Herman, 
fnim iht pU) b% Jim CnrlwHghL Mirnm*%. 12 W. *9 
mmv K. VVilhi janr llorrwb. MitKarl t’aine, I’.wau 
Mil.rtkur. Itn-mill Hlrltttn. 

Much to our surprise, this Oscar- 
nominated art house effort actually has 
u borderland genre element to it: the 
titular character played by Horrocks— 
a mousy, quiet girl capable of flaw¬ 
lessly imitating her favorite singers— 
only sings when she is inspired by vi¬ 
sions of her dead father, watching ap¬ 
provingly. 

The rest of the film is an entertain¬ 
ing, but flawed, effort, detailing the ef¬ 
forts of two-bit sleazy manager Ray 
Say (Caine) to exploit L.V.’s talent and 
reach the big time. Meanwhile. L.V. s 
mother (Blelhyn) browbeats her re¬ 
lentlessly. and an almost equally quiet 
telephone installer (McGregor) moons 
over the young girl, when he’s not 
mourning the absence of his beloved 
carrier pigeon. Duane. 

'ITic story is interesting, hut it takes 
too long to get to the best part, which 
is Little Voice’s triumphant one-night 
appearance at a local night club. When 
Horrocks’ talents as a galvanizing on¬ 
stage performer are finally revealed, 
they are doubly impressive because, as 
an actress, she has so effectively con¬ 
vinced us of L.V.’s quiet nature. 

Unfortunately, this sequence seems 
all too brief, leaving us wanting more 
of the energy and excitement that 
quickly disipaics when L.V.. whit only 
sings for her father, refuses to be ex¬ 
ploited as Ray Say’s ticket to the big 
time. Instead, too much screen time is 
wasted on Blethyn’s scenery-chewing 
as L.V.’s obnoxious mother: her acting 
is too broad; the character isn’t our lo¬ 
cus of interest; and many of her scenes 
don’t advance the stoTy. Incredibly. 
Blcthyn received an Oscar nomina¬ 
tion. making this without a doubt the 
most overrated performance of last 
vear. •• Slot Kiudruwski 


LASERBLAST: 

“PI” 


By Dennis Fischer 


With great ingenuity, debuting di¬ 
rector Darren Aronofsky created a 
modern-day black-and-white science 
fiction thriller 71 for $60,000, largely 
raised in one-hundred-dollar incre¬ 
ments from friends and family. 
Everyone on the film worked for the 
same fee—$2(H) a day deferred salary 
plus an equal share of 50 points on 
the film’s take. The movie was criti¬ 
cally acclaimed, and Aronofsky won 
the 199R Sundance Directing award 
and the IFF Gotham Award for best 
new filmmaker. 

Now Artisan Entertainment has 
done a bang-up job presenting the 
film on DVD. 7t presents its story 
subjectively through the eyes of its 
brilliant but disturbed protagonist, 
mathematician Maximilian Cohen 
(Sean Gullettc). who has been seek¬ 
ing to decode the numerical pattern 
behind the ultimate system of ordered 
chaos, namely the stock market. Co¬ 
hen can quickly calculate large num¬ 
bers in his head and has created Eu¬ 
clid, a home-made computer, to aid 
him in his quest, but suffers from in¬ 
tense migraine headaches and reality- 
altering hallucinations. 

Unlike many modern SF films, 7t 
offers nuanced characters rather than 
special effects spectacle. Cohen, a 
withdrawn individual who shuns out¬ 
side contact, apart from his Go games 
with retired mathematician Sol Robe¬ 
son (Mark Margolis), finds himself 
accosted by Lenny Meyer, a friendly 
Kaballah-loving Jew aware of Co¬ 
hen's reputation and by Marcy Daw¬ 
son, a stockbroker who wishes to aid 
Max in his work in hopes that he will 
succeed. 

The DVD preserves the original 
1.66 aspect ratio and is presented in 
2.0 Dolby audio. Aronofsky and di¬ 
rector of photography Matthew Liha- 
tique used black-and-white reversal 
stock to emphasize the film’s con¬ 
trast. oftentimes leading to a grainy 
image (while other scenes possess a 
searing sharpness). To emphasize 
Max’s dislocation from his somewhat 
cyberpunk environment (shot in New 
York’s Chinatown). Aronofsky em¬ 
ployed Snorricam. where a camera 
was attached to Gullettc’s trunk. Ad¬ 
ditionally. he subtly overcranks shots 
of Gullettc while undercranking shots 
from the character’s point of view. 

In addition to the feature, the 
DVD offers three lost scenes (with 
and without commentary) plus a 
Snorricam test; a behind-the-scenes 
montage, the actual theatrical trailer 
and a superior, unused trailer assem¬ 
bled by Aronofsky and producer Eric 
Watson; a Jl- (squared) music video 
with shots from the film interspersed 
with color footage of ants and set to 
Clint Mansell’s arresting techno 
theme music; samples from Aronof¬ 
sky’s “Book of Ants," a graphic novel 


60 














version illustrated by Ross Flynn; as 
well as two feature length commen¬ 
taries, one from director Aronofsky 
and one from star (iulletic. 

I n his commentaries. Aronofsky 
proves quick to assign credit where it 
is due, noting when Gullctte helped 
write his own monologue, paying 
tribute to Margolis’ work as Sol 
Robeson, explaining that Max’s 
headaches ami nosebleeds were in¬ 
spired by his own lime spent in Hell’s 
Kitchen. He also acknowledges a kind 
of hip-hop sensibility as a filmmaker, 
sampling images and ideas from other 
works as well as using repetition to 
provide the film with a certain jumpy 
rhythm. The result was unquestion¬ 
ably one of the most engrossing and 
finest films of 1WH. 


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CARNIVAL OF SOULS 

rrhfitinurd from paps* 57 

it was a tiny role and a lot of tun to do, 
it was mote than just a bit unnerving." 

Berger's playing a part in Wes 
Craven’s CARNIVAL OF SOULS ap¬ 
pears to be the only element that was 
retained from the original film. “This 
remake,” Berger continued, “is not a 
remake in the strictest sense. It is tak¬ 
ing the basic ideas of some of the 
specifies, hut it’s also a completely 
new screenplay, with entirely different 
plot lines. Adam [Grossman, the writer 
and director] has done a fantastic job 
of retaining the spirit of the original, 
while at the same lime adding perks of 
his own. 

“Eveo with these changes, it’s very 
touching to me how much the people 
involved in this new CARNIVAL feel 
about the first film. They’re not on the 
let’s make some money on that cult fa¬ 
vorite bandwagon; they're doing a 
very clear and honorable homage to a 
film that, I’m very proud to say, I was 
a part of." 

BLACK MASK 

ciifilinurd fmm pagr 5K 

direct BLACK MASK. "I love doing 
action films. So in 1992, 1 returned to 
TV and shot niy first film MYSTBRY 
OF THE CONDOR, w hich earned me 
the Gold Medal in international TV 
programming at the New York Film 
Festival. Back then, whenever you do 
action, actors ask. "Oh. w hich style of 
action arc you doing, Tsui Hark or 
t hing Siu lung?” I told them that this 
w r as my own style and Tsui lound that 
style interesting, quite experimental 
and documentary-like. He asked me to 
direct his telefilm WONG FBI HUNG: 
THE K ASSASSINS, a spin-off from 
his film series.” (If you've never seen 
these spin-offs, they're nuttier than the 
films.) 

The University of Windsor (Cana¬ 
da) communications major Lee adds. 
“So after the series. Tsui asked me to 
direct BLACK MASK. 

Lee philosophically summed- up 
BLACK MASK by noting, "In life, if 
you want to do something you must do 
it yourself. It comes from the inside. I 
see action film in a similar fashion. It’s 
not how you design the action but how 
the internal emotion is created. II 
there's a message to the film, it's that 
it’s hard for people to be normal. So if 
you’re normal...don’t complain. 


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LOST WORLD: RESTORATION 
OR DESECRATION? 

Thank you for publishing some 
of my criticisms against restora¬ 
tion work of Edward Stratmann for 
the George Eastman House 
reconstruction of Willis O'Brien's 
1925 film, THE LOST WORLD 
(19:1/2 :108]. A complete copy of 
my open letter is available at the 
O'Brien website http://www 2.net- 
door.com/-campbab/kong.html. 

1 object to Stratmunn's elimi¬ 
nating over eight minutes of di¬ 
nosaur animation (the intrusive 
frames of human animators could 
be removed) just because they are 
not in the Marian Fairfax shooting 
script. There are tons of dinosaur- 
animation business in the old Ko* 
dascope print not in her shooting 
script. It seems a pity that this 
woman, who was disrespcctlul to¬ 
wards O’Brien’s work when alive, 
is now able to reach out from the 
grave, and eliminate over eight 
minutes of priceless O'Brien di¬ 
nosaur animation just because she 
did not describe it in her scenario. 
If we were to follow religiously 
her scenario, a great deal of di¬ 
nosaur animation that has survived 
for over 70 years would have to be 
pruned out. Incidentally, the out- 
takes shown publicly at Saginaw, 
Michigan, only involved human 
beings, not any dinosaur anima¬ 
tion, according to friends whit 
were there. 

Lawrence French is quite right, 

1 believe, in hitping for a release of 
these outtakes as a supplement be¬ 
hind the restoration at the end of a 
DVD and a laser disc. That is the 
way to go. Then shall be fulfilled 
Slratmann’s own words about 
these outtakes, “We are deter¬ 
mined to make the fullest and most 
watchable version from the avail¬ 
able resources...(on the outtakes], 
the quality of the animation is so 
high and the sequences are so good 
that they deserve to be seen, even 
if we can’t be certain that all of the 
shots were included in 1925." 

Regarding animation we know 
was part of the 1925 film. Strat¬ 
mann has accidentally left out two 
wonderful animation cuts, a long 
one and a short one, which defi¬ 
nitely should be placed in the East¬ 
man House restoration. The fact 
that he says otherwise in Cinefan- 
tastique convinces me that Strat¬ 
mann should ask his physician to 
declare him legally blind. My 


friends tell me these two cuts were 
not in the restoration print shown 
in Saginaw, that he was "washing 
his hands” of the matter and would 
do nothing further with the restora¬ 
tion. 

What Stratmann does not 
comprehend, is that there are two 
Allosaurus-Monoclonius fights 
in THE LOST WORLD. He uses 
only the second one in which a 
rather large Allosaurus mauls the 
Monoclonius. but gives up in or¬ 
der to snatch a Pterodactyl from 
the sky. The first fight, contain¬ 
ing some of O'Brien’s most 
beautiful work, is totally missing 
although it does exist in the Ko- 
dascope. In that first fight, a 
smaller Allosaurus attempts to 
maul the Monoclonius, but the 
vegetarian triumphs by ramming 
his horn into the Allosaurus’s 
belly and ripping it open. The Al¬ 
losaurus falls down and dies 
piteously in the mud. His corpse 
some of the time can be seen ly¬ 
ing on the ground during the sec¬ 
ond fight, which is all that Strat¬ 
mann has given us. I hope I do 
not damage posterity’s chance of 
seeing both fights someday to¬ 
gether by pointing out that nei¬ 
ther fight it described in the Fair¬ 
fax shooting script. 

It is not too late to include these 
cuts, thereby making the restora¬ 
tion a resounding success. Perhaps 
Eastman House, if it really wants 
to be responsible, should ask the 
Disney organization if it can spare 
Scott MacQueen for a few days to 
put a final polish on Stratmunn’s 
work. 

David M. Massaro 
Cleveland. OH 


STOP-MOTION: 

KEEPING THE FAITH 

1 cannot thank you enough for the 
stop-motion double issue (31:1/2). It 
was incredible the amount of stuff 
you put in there. I love stop-motion, 
particularly what Jim Dan forth. Ray 
Harryhausen. Dave Allen, and Phil 
Tippett do. 

After JURASSIC PARK. I was 
beginning to think that all this stull 
would just dry up. but the articles 
on THE PRIMEVILS have been 
uplifting (but at the same time, 
kind of depressing). I hope that 
film beats the odds and is a hit. 
When that film comes out. give it 
tons of coverage, as most people 


will not have heard of it. and it 
could be vital to the survival of 
that sort of stop-motion. 

I was surprised to see in your ar¬ 
ticle on Jim Danforth that he had in¬ 
corporated a motion blur on the 
pterodactyl in WHEN DI¬ 
NOSAURS RULED THE EARTH. 

I checked the film, and sure enough, 
there were motion blurs. I have no 
idea how he did this in the late bOs. 
before computers were economical¬ 
ly viable. It doesn't appear to have 
been accomplished by either go- 
motion. or the process described by 
David Allen in the article on THE 
PRIMEVILS. and is extremely ef¬ 
fective. A lot of the work on that 
film is actually more realistic than 
most of the computer animation I 
have seen, and is only surpassed in 
big budget films with teams of 20 or 
more special effects artists working 
on CGI alone. THE LOST WORLD 
had 28 animators alone, and then 
there's composites, animation direc¬ 
tors. programmers, match-movers, 
and rotoscope artists. 

On stop-motion, having a really 
detailed model isn’t going to slow 
your computer down like with CGI. 
S'our stop-motion model can be as 
detailed as you want, and if well an¬ 
imated. it can lose entirely the strob¬ 
ing. jerkv look of old stop-motion. 1 
think it should be seen more as a vi¬ 
able alternative to CGI. not simply 
the crude, outdated craft it is per¬ 
ceived to be. Good stop-motion is a 
hell of a lot more gratifying to 
watch than the best CGI. 

Edward Boles 
Ireland 

[A cover story on the making of 
THE PRIMEVILS and a career ar¬ 
ticle on animator David Allen is 
planned to promote the film's re¬ 
lease next year. ] 

Starship troopers 
VS. PRIVATE RYAN 
I wish vou would quit defending 
STARSHIP TROOPERS as some 
kind of overlooked gem. 
[30:11:57] After reading your 
comparison of this film with Spiel¬ 
berg’s SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. 
I felt I hud to write. Admittedly 
Spielberg's movie has (laws, and 
you rightly point out that the 
Nazi’s are not much different from 
the cardboard, bad guys of the In¬ 
diana Jones movies. However, 
Spielberg’s movie clearly depicts 


and condemns the horrors of war. 
What Vcrhoeven’s movie is about 
is anybody's guess. Ironic? Paro¬ 
dy? A black comedy? Whatever 
Verhoeven and his writers and pro¬ 
ducers intended, it did not end up 
on the screen. If the movie was a 
straight copy of lleinlcin’s book it 
would have clearly showed Ric- 
co’s slow transformation into a 
fighting machine. However, what 
we ended up with was a bit of 
Heinlein, a big screen bug war. 
borrowings from ALIENS (“It 
must be some kind of hug we 
haven't seen yet”) and a choking 
dose of high school romance 
thrown in. The film also reuses 
Verhoeven's best ideas from 
ROBOCOP so badly that it sug¬ 
gests the director had run out of 
ideas for this film. 

I’m not sure what the producers 
of STARSHIP TROOPERS hoped 
to deliver. What we got was a 
mess. The real shame is that this is 
another really bad film with Phil 
Tippett's excellent special effects 
attached to it. Let’s hope Mr. Tip¬ 
pett fairs better in the future. 

Aaron Albrecht 
Tokyo. Japan 

Less tv. more film 

I am writing about the large 
amount of space you have devot¬ 
ed to season episode guides of 
television programs in your last 
couple of issues. What makes 
fantasy films fun has always 
been the experience of joining a 
crowd in a darkened theater 
while amazing things happen on 
the big screen. Please, don't de¬ 
prive us of film reviews in favor 
of TV coverage in your maga¬ 
zine. 

Aaron D. Abrecht 
Tokyo,Japan 


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Also in this issue, a preview of George Lucas's STAR WARS: THE 
PHANTOM MENACE, probably the most eagerly awaited fantasy film of 
the decade. Plus a look at "The Men Behind the Masks" of the original tril¬ 
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